Some of us have been active in political, social justice, civil rights or environmental causes for a good bit of our lives if we’re now in our 60s and 70s. We might have been active in marches, demonstrations and rallies for one cause or another, to some degree of commitment or another. Some have truly put their asses on the line and gotten jailed, beaten or worse, while others have taken a less dedicated but still active engagement in trying to change things.
Those who took action in causes did so because they believed it was the right and just thing to do, that it was an obligation as citizens in a democracy to be engaged in our society and because we thought we could change the world and make it a better place. Now I find myself wondering if any of it, certainly most of it, really mattered and here are the reasons for what in truth is a deep and abiding pessimism.
Taking stock, on the plus side there’s no denying that in the realm of civil rights great progress has been made. It took a hundred years for the Proclamation ending slavery to take hold through the establishment and protection of Congressional Acts, but it did happen. No efforts or sacrifices on these behalves were wasted and some were courageous beyond the dedication of the many. On the plus side have been legal environmental protections, including wilderness and wildlife conservation, although the record of enforcement of these safeguards has been very spotty. And there have been significant advances protecting and regulating the rights of labor from abuse and exploitation, though the minimum wage is an absurdly low rate of pay in today’s economy. Add to these positive and progressive advancements Social Security and Medicare and it presents a somewhat impressive picture of accomplishment. But despite these gains the question remains: Do we stand in a better place in this time, in this world?
We need to consider the state of our country and the world in order to answer that question.
There can be little doubt that the paramount, overriding and profoundly affecting crisis we face – we humans around the world – is global warming and climate change. This will literally change the face of the planet and impact billions of people and other species as well. This is the biggest game changer for the human race save perhaps a nuclear Armageddon, which is easily not beyond possibility.
Runner up on and in league with climate change as a global scale crisis (the word problem doesn’t begin to do it justice) is that we must abandon fossil fuel energy and convert, all of us, to sustainable, non-polluting forms of energy. Obviously these first two imperative crises are entirely interwoven. Thirdly of global scope is the rate at which we humans are depleting the Earth’s resources; resources that humans depend on, anyway.
We know that the oceans are being over-fished at a rate where certain species are bound for extinction and other fish stocks are being reduced faster than supply is sustainable. Less than 1% of the Earth’s water is potable and that supply is dwindling due to unprecedented world population explosion, man-made pollution and warming climate. Drinking water has become a corporate commodity joining the list of shrinking resources. The replenishing of fresh water is governed by rainfall, which in turn depends on climate conditions. Agriculture is dependent upon fresh water supplies and when this vital resource decreases the world’s food supplies are affected. The rate of planetary desertification is well documented as well as increasing drought and famine in certain parts of the world. Rainforests and woodlands are being clear-cut to accommodate human needs and can never be replaced once gone. Yet humans keep on reproducing like there’s no tomorrow; almost racing over the cliff to extinction like lemmings. Very smart.
Focusing the lens here at home in America we have this picture before us: a steadily declining democracy, once a republic, but one that has been usurped by mega corporations whose only interest is the bottom line. It employs armies of lobbyists to deliver its messages, cajoling and or threatening, to politicians and their parties who in turn do their bidding. Anyone naïve enough to believe this isn’t so is beyond the reach of logic. The military/industrial-corporate complex is now and has been for decades so well entrenched as to be untouchable. Government … politics, as it’s played out here, is for and by the corporations, which for the most part control elections by lending or withholding monetary support in an electoral system dependent upon it. It’s a neat trick and big business interests have pulled it off. They even own the media so as to have in-house public relations “information” spinners to manipulate mass appeal and acceptance.
In short, we the American people are bought, sold and owned by the corporate masters that are driven only by profits; principles, morality, integrity, justice or any human philosophical attribute that strives for a greater society is absolutely inconsequential. It’s the result of unregulated, unrestrained capitalism that is driven by greed and short-term monetary gain. We, all of us, are completely in their grip, and knowing this they can occasionally throw us some bones in the form of watered-down legislation, e.g., health care “reform” or Wall Street “reform.”
And it doesn’t much matter who gets to play president, or to which party those pompous, posturing asses strutting around as self-important politicians belong, big business runs the show and the military polices the world enforcing its demands. The people always get screwed. It’s only a matter of degree. The corporations – oil, defense, insurance, banking, media, et al. – are international, multi-national behemoths, richer and more powerful than most of the nations on Earth; they rule and we all work for the companies whether we know it or not.
Corporate industry doesn’t want an end to war – it’s very profitable and life is cheap. Large corporate industries deny global warming and climate change because it will affect profits; it’s not good for business. Cleaning up industry’s pollution of land, air and water is not in businesses’ interest; it costs too much and cuts into profits. Business wants everything for sale including water suitable for drinking and air suitable for breathing.
If one needs proof of these claims simply look around. Unemployment is the highest it has been since the 1930s [www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10herbert]. Our government pours hundreds of billions into wars, national security agencies, military bases in hundreds of countries across the globe and weapons systems powerful enough to destroy the world in an afternoon, but we really don’t give a shit about our schools, our crumbling cities, highways and bridges and all the rest of it. Political claptrap is mouthed about caring about these things, and priorities, and the like, but it’s a lot of crap when we look at where the money is really spent. It’s spent on war, preparing for war, arming for war and using our military might to enforce U.S. “interests.” It’s in our interest to be in Iraq or Afghanistan, or in league with Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, we’re told. The U.S. has between 700-800 military bases around the world protecting our interests [www.globalresearch.org]. Is that so, one wonders? Whose interests? Well it’s not my interest; is it yours?
We are literally awash in pollution – from industry, agriculture and what has become our everyday life. We all know there are islands of crap, plastic and other non-biodegradable garbage, larger than some states and growing by the day. There are dead zones in our oceans where nothing can live because the oxygen has been so depleted because of human-made pollution. Our answer to this is to double our (world) population every 20 years – world population in 1950 was 2.5 billion and in 2010 it’s 7 billion [U.S. Census Bureau] – effectively increasing scarcity of vital needs and resource degradation, and enhancing human suffering to unprecedented proportions. But who gives a rat’s ass, and who won the Big game is what we Americans want to know. That’s what we care about.
For all these reasons and many more I believe it’s end game, checkmate, bill paying time. We’ve fouled our nest to a point beyond repair, we’ve sold ourselves to consumerism for the ephemeral promises of happiness, and maybe worst of all believe we can pull our sorry asses out of the fire because we’re so damned smart. Yup, pride will do us all in, just as we’ve been told all along. Pride eradicates intelligence, pushes reason aside and obscures the reality of what is before our eyes. Maybe it’s our greatest sin because it makes us believe when there are no grounds for belief. It blinds us to see and feel what is real and what is really going on.
What can we do about it? My answer is not a fuck of a lot. Many I know disagree with that prognosis. They say we can change government by working inside the system. If we’re Democrats we can work within the party to make it more progressive, enact progressive legislation and change the game. I wish I could believe that, but I don’t. Others say we must build a green/progressive/peace-oriented third party to compete with the big boys, but that doesn’t seem feasible either. The current political system is rigged against that happening. Flukes like Ross Perrot’s libertarian challenge, or Huey Long style populism arise every now and then, but these only serve to advantage one of the two parties; they’re not fundamental game-changers.
I believe that we’re dug in too deep, and ironically instead of trying to dig our way out we just keep on digging deeper. Whether the world ends in a whimper or a bang remains to be seen, but our unsustainable ways of being on this planet in every respect have failed. What it would take to change our ways – great disasters or miraculous epiphanies – I don’t know. That Prince of Optimists, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, delivered what I’d call a remarkable speech, especially from a politician, at a conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2002. It’s far too long to reproduce here, but can be accessed at www.praxispeace.org. At one point in the speech, reflecting on our human proclivity for making war, Kucinich says: “Though flames of war from the millions of hearts and the dozens of places wherein it rages, may lick at our consciousness, our gaze must be fixed upward to invoke universal principles of unity, of co-operation, of compassion, to infuse our world with peace, to ask for the active presence of peace, to expand our capacity to receive it and to express it in our everyday life. We must do this fearlessly and courageously and not breathe in the poison gas of terror. As we receive, so shall we give [emphasis added].
Can we grow to understand that all humanity, all living creatures and Nature itself are one family and that we inhabit one world, interconnected, interdependent and interrelated to the whole? Whatever is done to or for one part, one individual, one group, one nation, affects all. Until it’s understood at the most fundamental level that we are literally all in this together we cannot hope to extricate ourselves from a spiral of death and dissolution in the only world we have. Perhaps, maybe we can reach this understanding despite all the signs that point the other way. All things are possible, I suppose.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Ground Zero Intolerance
The controversy over a Muslim community center and mosque being constructed in close proximity to the WTC’s “Ground Zero” is an exercise in bigoted illogic. The argument goes: It was people of the Muslim faith that perpetrated the horrific murders of thousands and therefore a mosque near that site is an affront to all Americans. Here’s the trouble with that argument.
While it’s true that the people who ordered, planned and executed that monstrous crime are Muslims, they are members of a small minority of a radical, extremist and murderous faction of that religion of 1.2 billion practitioners, who ardently disavow them, their perverted beliefs and their methods, here in this country and practically every Muslim country. Painting all Muslims with a brush of terrorist or terrorist sympathizer makes as much sense as condemning white Christians for the crimes of Timothy McVeigh, or aligning all Southerners for the acts of the KKK. Do we say no Catholic churches near schools because there are some priests who have abused children?
Because every religion seems to give rise to some faction of radical, unlawful, psychopathic extremists does not mean it is emblematic of the principles of that religion, and is in fact the antithesis of those beliefs. A radical, orthodox Jew assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Rabin some years ago. Are all orthodox Jews terrorist murderers? Drawing such conclusions is preposterous.
And, more important, it’s dangerous. It’s an excuse for bigotry and persecution. It’s a pretense for denying the civil rights of a group of Americans by innuendo, and if it works this time it makes it all the more easy for it to happen again, whether it’s Muslims or some other group.
It’s a situation that is being cynically and unethically employed by some politicians to gain support in some quarters in order to gain votes. It is an appeal to the basest instincts, innate prejudices and unwarranted fears of some of our citizens by self-serving politicians and those who abet and encourage bigotry, hatred and distrust – the bottom-feeders of society.
There is another argument that is being put forth that sounds reasonable, but on examination is flawed. There are those who are saying – DNC Chairman Howard Dean on the national scene and Sonoma County Supervisor Shirley Zane locally – that the Muslim organization proposing the community center should be sensitive to the opposition to its location and find another site further away. Taken to its logical conclusion that means unpopular decisions should be tried in the court of public opinion and disregard constitutional laws established to protect civil rights. Think what this kind of bowing to public pressure would have meant to the great civil rights struggles fought valiantly in our country over the years.
Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg of NYC for defending the Muslim center on First Amendment grounds and dispelling critics’ cries of sacrilege. Obama should have had the courage to stop after his first comment instead of equivocating, and Democrats like Harry Reid are political cowards. If President John Adams were alive he’d be the legal advocate for the Muslim group wanting to build in lower Manhattan. He and the other founders knew it was the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights that was the backbone of our democracy, the framework upon which all the constitutional protections are constructed. If it crumbles we all go down with it.
…………………….
Comments:
C Castelli
You could also have thrown in:
1. It's not a mosque but a cultural center (which encourages interfaith tolerance and harmony).
2. The owners of the proposed cultural center are neither sunni nor shiite but sufi.
3. The cultural center would be 2 blocks (and out of view from) ground zero.
4. Nobody is objecting to the strip clubs facing ground zero.
5. This story first broke in December of 2009. Nobody paid any attention until right wing conservatives thought they had an election issue. At the time many relatives of 9/11 victims thought the cultural center was a good idea.
……………………..
J. Lynch
Marvelous
I absolutely agree.
As much as I detest ridiculous people devoted to goofy religions, sects, cults –all of them–often used to justify blowing people up, raping and mutilating women, bombing functioing cities and their citizens, judging others or used as a distraction form living in this world as we know it, of course you can worship anything anytime anywhere. The mosque construction will create snme jobs?
It's the "worship" bit that is skewed.
Please let us remember the Koran preaches hatred, and Allah liked little boys.
Ditto the Roman Catholic church!
I'm with the Native Americans:
The spirit is in the land, the trees the rivers and streams, the animals the stars. "Religion" is all around us and in us. Looking for some man-made "lemonade twaddle," as Soren Kirkegaard called religion, is a waste of time, in my humble opinon.
Frankly I'm fed up with catholicism's sanctimonious rules & regs re who can have an abortion, get married, or admit to having sex with 8 year-old boys, and dopey conversations about bloody birkas, the twaddling Koran, the fairy stories in the Bible whatever? It's all irrelevant.
Let's figure out how not to overpopulate, stink up the planet, and clean up our act here.
We are the only species on the planet that dirties its own nest. We are now defacating into water we are about to drink!
LA is currently recycling sewage for human consumption.
Not a good thing
…………….
While it’s true that the people who ordered, planned and executed that monstrous crime are Muslims, they are members of a small minority of a radical, extremist and murderous faction of that religion of 1.2 billion practitioners, who ardently disavow them, their perverted beliefs and their methods, here in this country and practically every Muslim country. Painting all Muslims with a brush of terrorist or terrorist sympathizer makes as much sense as condemning white Christians for the crimes of Timothy McVeigh, or aligning all Southerners for the acts of the KKK. Do we say no Catholic churches near schools because there are some priests who have abused children?
Because every religion seems to give rise to some faction of radical, unlawful, psychopathic extremists does not mean it is emblematic of the principles of that religion, and is in fact the antithesis of those beliefs. A radical, orthodox Jew assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Rabin some years ago. Are all orthodox Jews terrorist murderers? Drawing such conclusions is preposterous.
And, more important, it’s dangerous. It’s an excuse for bigotry and persecution. It’s a pretense for denying the civil rights of a group of Americans by innuendo, and if it works this time it makes it all the more easy for it to happen again, whether it’s Muslims or some other group.
It’s a situation that is being cynically and unethically employed by some politicians to gain support in some quarters in order to gain votes. It is an appeal to the basest instincts, innate prejudices and unwarranted fears of some of our citizens by self-serving politicians and those who abet and encourage bigotry, hatred and distrust – the bottom-feeders of society.
There is another argument that is being put forth that sounds reasonable, but on examination is flawed. There are those who are saying – DNC Chairman Howard Dean on the national scene and Sonoma County Supervisor Shirley Zane locally – that the Muslim organization proposing the community center should be sensitive to the opposition to its location and find another site further away. Taken to its logical conclusion that means unpopular decisions should be tried in the court of public opinion and disregard constitutional laws established to protect civil rights. Think what this kind of bowing to public pressure would have meant to the great civil rights struggles fought valiantly in our country over the years.
Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg of NYC for defending the Muslim center on First Amendment grounds and dispelling critics’ cries of sacrilege. Obama should have had the courage to stop after his first comment instead of equivocating, and Democrats like Harry Reid are political cowards. If President John Adams were alive he’d be the legal advocate for the Muslim group wanting to build in lower Manhattan. He and the other founders knew it was the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights that was the backbone of our democracy, the framework upon which all the constitutional protections are constructed. If it crumbles we all go down with it.
…………………….
Comments:
C Castelli
You could also have thrown in:
1. It's not a mosque but a cultural center (which encourages interfaith tolerance and harmony).
2. The owners of the proposed cultural center are neither sunni nor shiite but sufi.
3. The cultural center would be 2 blocks (and out of view from) ground zero.
4. Nobody is objecting to the strip clubs facing ground zero.
5. This story first broke in December of 2009. Nobody paid any attention until right wing conservatives thought they had an election issue. At the time many relatives of 9/11 victims thought the cultural center was a good idea.
……………………..
J. Lynch
Marvelous
I absolutely agree.
As much as I detest ridiculous people devoted to goofy religions, sects, cults –all of them–often used to justify blowing people up, raping and mutilating women, bombing functioing cities and their citizens, judging others or used as a distraction form living in this world as we know it, of course you can worship anything anytime anywhere. The mosque construction will create snme jobs?
It's the "worship" bit that is skewed.
Please let us remember the Koran preaches hatred, and Allah liked little boys.
Ditto the Roman Catholic church!
I'm with the Native Americans:
The spirit is in the land, the trees the rivers and streams, the animals the stars. "Religion" is all around us and in us. Looking for some man-made "lemonade twaddle," as Soren Kirkegaard called religion, is a waste of time, in my humble opinon.
Frankly I'm fed up with catholicism's sanctimonious rules & regs re who can have an abortion, get married, or admit to having sex with 8 year-old boys, and dopey conversations about bloody birkas, the twaddling Koran, the fairy stories in the Bible whatever? It's all irrelevant.
Let's figure out how not to overpopulate, stink up the planet, and clean up our act here.
We are the only species on the planet that dirties its own nest. We are now defacating into water we are about to drink!
LA is currently recycling sewage for human consumption.
Not a good thing
…………….
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Dancing with the Demons of Mind
The last few weeks have been an emotional whirlwind, bouncing from utter fear, to anger, to resentment, to resignation and philosophical acceptance, and back and forth between these poles like a billiard ball. Worst of all is the not-knowing – do I have cancer or not – and with that question the mind projects all the possible scenarios, and the captive audience of one gets to enjoy the whole circus. And it’s everything but dull, and you begin to re-appreciate times of boredom and ordinary dullness.
I would never usually begin with, “It all began,” but it all began about six months ago when I got some lousy numbers on a PSA test. For those who don’t know, as I didn’t, PSA stands for Prostate-Specific Antigen blood test, and any PSA value higher than 4 usually indicates an enlarged prostate gland and about a 50% probability of having cancer. An enlarged prostate in men over 60 is not unusual at all, but if a doctor, a competent one, sees a number greater than 4 in your PSA blood test it’s a warning flag. Interestingly the medical profession has lowered that base number from 4 to 2.5. My local GP, spotting a number of 4.65 advised I see a specialist and get a second PSA as well; both of which I did.
The second PSA doesn’t look any better and I’m not freaking out or anything, but it’s got my attention. So off I trot to Dr. X, who looks like a kid to me, but then again anybody under 50 looks like a kid to me, and he checks me out. I’ll spare you the details. He gives me what I presume to be the standard tutorial about prostate health, what the numbers can mean, operative word being can, and based on this info I decide to let things go for about six months, get another PSA then and see where things are at. Dr. Kid concurs and off we go to our separate lives.
So for the next six months my mind is noodling with thoughts of life and death, and all the things I’ve not done, not seen, not accomplished and other such titillating conjectures, but it’s not a full time occupation and I get on with the tasks of the day.
Time passes – cut to fluttering calendar pages – and it’s off for another PSA. Numbers higher. It’s now in the 5s. Another meet-up with young Dr. X. We agree that the only way to find out what’s really going on is taking the next step – a biopsy. He gives me all the medical particulars and I tell him I’ll give him my decision in a couple of days; all the while thinking, I want a second opinion.
One thing needs to be said at this point. I’m not going to reveal the outcome of this story until it’s necessary so that the reader can experience a taste of the aforementioned ‘not-knowing’ as did the writer. Makes for better drama, anyway.
Local primary Doc agrees about second opinion and sets me up with a “hot shot” in Marin. Dr. Hot Shot gives me the once over, not the most engaging of fellows, making me feel more predisposed toward Dr. Kid, and agrees with prognosis to get a biopsy. Okay, thinks I, the dye is cast. I schedule one with Dr. kid: he’s my guy – I’m going with him. He looks at you when he’s talking to you and listening to you.
Now the worry barometer kicks into high gear. There’s the fear of the biopsy – the fear of the pain. Always an attention graber. Then there’s the fear of the outcome, the great, existential door-prize, which I’m becoming convinced is my immediate fate, along with Dennis Hopper, not someone I’d buddy up with going across the great divide, but one doesn’t get to choose in such matters. Now, as they say, the mind is focused, and oh how I’d like some mind-bendingly boring ordinariness,
When you can set aside the palpable fear of the biopsy procedure for maybe a few minutes with the news on TV, the pageantry of national and global misery, or get caught up with the blessed relief of kitchen remodel work, there’s still the underlying dialogue in your mind about your death, you’re no-moreness. It seems almost unbelievable. You’ve always been you, ever since you can remember. How can that just disappear? Cease to be? Stupid thoughts, but up they come anyway.
And then how do you handle the whole thing? How do you play it out? I’ve got to be brave about this, I tell myself. I have to handle this with dignity, courage and mature resolution. But I’m scared shitless, I confess to myself. Get over it, you pussy, I slap myself straight. And then there’s the wheelbarrows of self-pity. It’s not fair, everybody is living much longer than 69, 70. My dad made it to 86, as if it’s a scorecard, and goddamn it, it is.
Around and around, sleepless nights, visiting every room of the internal lunatic asylum like Dr. Demento on rounds. All the usual distractions come and go, but under cover or lurking behind the next corner is the worry-demon, ready to pounce. And numero-uno on the top 10-worry list is the biopsy. Just the word is enough to conjure nightmares.
So, comes Biop-day, and I, now known as the patient, ride off to Petaluma for a new experience, which in and of itself turns out not to be a big deal. In fact it’s a small deal, not painful, nor a barrel of laughs either, and lasts less than a half-hour.
Dr. Kid and I exchange pleasantries. I call him by his first name and invite him to do same. After all, I figure if he’s going to be mucking around my innards we should be on a first name basis. He’s very patient with his visibly nervous patient, and a snip here and a snip there, and one is back in the car and headed home.
Now comes numero-two-o on the worry barometer, far surpassing the easily handled biopsy number. Now comes all the possible results, from get your affairs in order to a litany of chemical and nuke treatments, and all the surgical stops between. My mind, a labyrinth of things to worry about that I’ve long wandered, hardly ever dares entertain positive outcomes. Maybe it’s just habit or simple superstition, but I’ve never been one to accentuate the positive.
I won’t get an answer until Friday so there’s ample time to endlessly review how the bad news is going to be broken, which kicks off scenario-like coming attractions of how I’m going to deal with it. Brave, courageous and bold, or sniveling, complaining, pitiable whelp? Or both for that matter. There’s no dearth of possible melodramas to consider that all end with the demise of my favorite character in the play. Call me narcissistic, but I’ve grown used to me over the years, and I like my life and I’m not ready to exit the stage.
Okay then, Friday rolls around and it’s meeting time with Dr. Kid for results. Short wait in office in local hospital, escorted into a private room, and before I have time to read the same line in some newspaper story more than a few times in comes young Doc. And he’s smiling. A good sign, my inner genius notes. “Good news,” says he, or something to that effect, “there’s no cancer.” He goes on to give me some other happy medical data, but I’m not really hearing the details. I heard what I wanted to hear and the rest are throwaway lines. I note young Doc looks sincerely happy and I like him all the more.
“Do you mind if I let out a war-whoop?” I ask him. He smiles uncertainly, but nods agreement. I let one go; hospital or no hospital. I’ve been doing a from the gut, from the soul, really loud whoop when overcome with exceedingly great moments of joy in life for years now. There are times, not many, when it’s the only thing one can say.
No moral to this tale, nor wisdom gained or newfound understanding of the curious state of being alive, in a body, inexorably decaying and a consciousness that keeps you aware of all the disparate things that are happening to something you call yourself. And you go about living it out day by day, hour by hour, worrying, rejoicing, getting angry, sad and disappointed, as well as laughing and crying. And all in all very thankful that you get a chance to keep doing it for a while longer.
I would never usually begin with, “It all began,” but it all began about six months ago when I got some lousy numbers on a PSA test. For those who don’t know, as I didn’t, PSA stands for Prostate-Specific Antigen blood test, and any PSA value higher than 4 usually indicates an enlarged prostate gland and about a 50% probability of having cancer. An enlarged prostate in men over 60 is not unusual at all, but if a doctor, a competent one, sees a number greater than 4 in your PSA blood test it’s a warning flag. Interestingly the medical profession has lowered that base number from 4 to 2.5. My local GP, spotting a number of 4.65 advised I see a specialist and get a second PSA as well; both of which I did.
The second PSA doesn’t look any better and I’m not freaking out or anything, but it’s got my attention. So off I trot to Dr. X, who looks like a kid to me, but then again anybody under 50 looks like a kid to me, and he checks me out. I’ll spare you the details. He gives me what I presume to be the standard tutorial about prostate health, what the numbers can mean, operative word being can, and based on this info I decide to let things go for about six months, get another PSA then and see where things are at. Dr. Kid concurs and off we go to our separate lives.
So for the next six months my mind is noodling with thoughts of life and death, and all the things I’ve not done, not seen, not accomplished and other such titillating conjectures, but it’s not a full time occupation and I get on with the tasks of the day.
Time passes – cut to fluttering calendar pages – and it’s off for another PSA. Numbers higher. It’s now in the 5s. Another meet-up with young Dr. X. We agree that the only way to find out what’s really going on is taking the next step – a biopsy. He gives me all the medical particulars and I tell him I’ll give him my decision in a couple of days; all the while thinking, I want a second opinion.
One thing needs to be said at this point. I’m not going to reveal the outcome of this story until it’s necessary so that the reader can experience a taste of the aforementioned ‘not-knowing’ as did the writer. Makes for better drama, anyway.
Local primary Doc agrees about second opinion and sets me up with a “hot shot” in Marin. Dr. Hot Shot gives me the once over, not the most engaging of fellows, making me feel more predisposed toward Dr. Kid, and agrees with prognosis to get a biopsy. Okay, thinks I, the dye is cast. I schedule one with Dr. kid: he’s my guy – I’m going with him. He looks at you when he’s talking to you and listening to you.
Now the worry barometer kicks into high gear. There’s the fear of the biopsy – the fear of the pain. Always an attention graber. Then there’s the fear of the outcome, the great, existential door-prize, which I’m becoming convinced is my immediate fate, along with Dennis Hopper, not someone I’d buddy up with going across the great divide, but one doesn’t get to choose in such matters. Now, as they say, the mind is focused, and oh how I’d like some mind-bendingly boring ordinariness,
When you can set aside the palpable fear of the biopsy procedure for maybe a few minutes with the news on TV, the pageantry of national and global misery, or get caught up with the blessed relief of kitchen remodel work, there’s still the underlying dialogue in your mind about your death, you’re no-moreness. It seems almost unbelievable. You’ve always been you, ever since you can remember. How can that just disappear? Cease to be? Stupid thoughts, but up they come anyway.
And then how do you handle the whole thing? How do you play it out? I’ve got to be brave about this, I tell myself. I have to handle this with dignity, courage and mature resolution. But I’m scared shitless, I confess to myself. Get over it, you pussy, I slap myself straight. And then there’s the wheelbarrows of self-pity. It’s not fair, everybody is living much longer than 69, 70. My dad made it to 86, as if it’s a scorecard, and goddamn it, it is.
Around and around, sleepless nights, visiting every room of the internal lunatic asylum like Dr. Demento on rounds. All the usual distractions come and go, but under cover or lurking behind the next corner is the worry-demon, ready to pounce. And numero-uno on the top 10-worry list is the biopsy. Just the word is enough to conjure nightmares.
So, comes Biop-day, and I, now known as the patient, ride off to Petaluma for a new experience, which in and of itself turns out not to be a big deal. In fact it’s a small deal, not painful, nor a barrel of laughs either, and lasts less than a half-hour.
Dr. Kid and I exchange pleasantries. I call him by his first name and invite him to do same. After all, I figure if he’s going to be mucking around my innards we should be on a first name basis. He’s very patient with his visibly nervous patient, and a snip here and a snip there, and one is back in the car and headed home.
Now comes numero-two-o on the worry barometer, far surpassing the easily handled biopsy number. Now comes all the possible results, from get your affairs in order to a litany of chemical and nuke treatments, and all the surgical stops between. My mind, a labyrinth of things to worry about that I’ve long wandered, hardly ever dares entertain positive outcomes. Maybe it’s just habit or simple superstition, but I’ve never been one to accentuate the positive.
I won’t get an answer until Friday so there’s ample time to endlessly review how the bad news is going to be broken, which kicks off scenario-like coming attractions of how I’m going to deal with it. Brave, courageous and bold, or sniveling, complaining, pitiable whelp? Or both for that matter. There’s no dearth of possible melodramas to consider that all end with the demise of my favorite character in the play. Call me narcissistic, but I’ve grown used to me over the years, and I like my life and I’m not ready to exit the stage.
Okay then, Friday rolls around and it’s meeting time with Dr. Kid for results. Short wait in office in local hospital, escorted into a private room, and before I have time to read the same line in some newspaper story more than a few times in comes young Doc. And he’s smiling. A good sign, my inner genius notes. “Good news,” says he, or something to that effect, “there’s no cancer.” He goes on to give me some other happy medical data, but I’m not really hearing the details. I heard what I wanted to hear and the rest are throwaway lines. I note young Doc looks sincerely happy and I like him all the more.
“Do you mind if I let out a war-whoop?” I ask him. He smiles uncertainly, but nods agreement. I let one go; hospital or no hospital. I’ve been doing a from the gut, from the soul, really loud whoop when overcome with exceedingly great moments of joy in life for years now. There are times, not many, when it’s the only thing one can say.
No moral to this tale, nor wisdom gained or newfound understanding of the curious state of being alive, in a body, inexorably decaying and a consciousness that keeps you aware of all the disparate things that are happening to something you call yourself. And you go about living it out day by day, hour by hour, worrying, rejoicing, getting angry, sad and disappointed, as well as laughing and crying. And all in all very thankful that you get a chance to keep doing it for a while longer.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Ordinary Days, Occasional Disasters
Sunday afternoon. Read the paper – the PD – takes about 20 minutes. Didn’t finish a NY Times Sunday paper until Wednesday. It’s raining on and off. This is not supposed to happen here in May. World’s out of balance. Nature’s not happy.
Quite a week. Oil rig explosion turning out to be an environmental catastrophe of monstrous proportions. Guy tries to blow up Times Square and all who happened to be within radius of his bomb, had it gone off. I wonder if this guy will ever think about the totally innocent people he might have murdered, and how those deaths would have devastated their families and friends, other innocent people, now that he’s got the rest of his life to do nothing but think about things? Just ordinary people – vendors, out-of-town families, cops and others, moving through Times Square – who’ve got nothing to do with this guy’s hate, this guy’s sick, demented soul. All on what would have been another ordinary day. And then to boot it was all capped off by a stomach-churning roller coaster drop in the stock market reminiscent of 2008. Oh, God, here we go again!
But it’s Sunday, and it’s raining, and the dog needs walking. An ordinary day in a sea of ordinary days, except on those days when something goes haywire. The whole deal is very unpredictable, but we’re lulled into thinking it’s not by the ordinary, damned blessed ordinary, days.
The oil rig explosion, killing eleven workers, and massive spill taking out lord-knows how much wildlife, and poisoning the LA wetlands and shoreline for an indeterminate time is the big dose of reality we Americans need to face. If we want oil we are going to have to accept that there will be occurrences like this. I don’t say accident, I say ‘occurrence’ because what happened might have been preventable.
The flying fingers of blame point to a government agency, the Mineral Management Service (MMS), a Secretary of the Interior extremely thirsty for off-shore drilling, a President who touted for it with an assurance that all was safe in the hands of greater technology, not to leave out the corporation, British Petroleum, itself.
Were safety precautions, known and used by other drilling operations, disregarded because of costs? According to a Wall Street Journal article of April 28, “The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn't needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.” The article goes on to point out that regulators in two major oil-producing countries, Norway and Brazil, require them. According to environmental lawyer Mike Papantino, former vice-president Dick Cheney’s energy task force decided that the $500,000 switches were too expensive and BP wasn’t required to buy them. BP claims they’re not necessary because there are other back-up systems to prevent spills of this nature. How’s that workin’ for ya BP and MMS, as Palin would say?
Speaking of BP, Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen states that it has, “One of the worst safety records of any oil company operating in America. In just the last few years, BP has paid $485 million in fines and settlements to the US government for environmental crimes, willful neglect of worker safety rules, and penalties for manipulating energy markets.”
And speaking about other corporations involved in this disaster how about good ol’ Halliburton, the company responsible for the faulty cementing leading to the explosion? Even the maligned and notoriously lax U.S. Mineral Management Service reveals that cementing is “the single most important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period.” And as for former Colorado Senator Ken Salazar, now Secretary of the Interior, he has lobbied strenuously for increased offshore drilling and easing environmental regulations. It was MMS, a bureau of Salazar’s Department of Interior that issued BP and other oil companies categorical exclusions from Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) that might have pointed to the dangers of the deep-sea drilling operation. Mr. Salazar, as well as Mr. Obama have a lot to answer for.
However the responsibilities play out, of one thing we can be certain, other occurrences like this one will happen again. It will happen again because we are all addicted to oil. All of us, or at least 99.9 percent of us. That’s the plain truth. We burn it, use it to make all kinds of stuff we’ve come to depend on, and it’s how we live. Maybe some of us are more profligate, but we all share in our dependency on it. At least for the foreseeable future.
So we have to accept that rigs are going to blow somewhere on the planet that harbors rigs, and workers will die, and the unfortunate environment that’s in the way, animals and plants, other innocent victims, will pay a terrible price. That is the reality, and it applies to nuclear reactors as well, which when they blow will be a fatal error for millions of humans. It’s the cost of these kinds of energy.
The same reality applies to terrorist attacks – they will be tried. Safety is not assured. There is no way to guarantee security. It’s a fact of life. Measures can be taken to reduce the risks, but there’s nothing foolproof. And living in constant fear is no alternative. Being alive is a risky business.
And then the ordinary days lull you back to sleep, until another crazy thing comes along to wake you up. And how about that crazy stock market?
But it’s a Sunday afternoon, the rain is letting up, the dog is getting noudgy and it’s time to pick up a grilled chicken from the Mexican market. Thank the fates it’s an ordinary day.
Thanks to gregpalast.com and allenroland.com for additional information for this article.
Quite a week. Oil rig explosion turning out to be an environmental catastrophe of monstrous proportions. Guy tries to blow up Times Square and all who happened to be within radius of his bomb, had it gone off. I wonder if this guy will ever think about the totally innocent people he might have murdered, and how those deaths would have devastated their families and friends, other innocent people, now that he’s got the rest of his life to do nothing but think about things? Just ordinary people – vendors, out-of-town families, cops and others, moving through Times Square – who’ve got nothing to do with this guy’s hate, this guy’s sick, demented soul. All on what would have been another ordinary day. And then to boot it was all capped off by a stomach-churning roller coaster drop in the stock market reminiscent of 2008. Oh, God, here we go again!
But it’s Sunday, and it’s raining, and the dog needs walking. An ordinary day in a sea of ordinary days, except on those days when something goes haywire. The whole deal is very unpredictable, but we’re lulled into thinking it’s not by the ordinary, damned blessed ordinary, days.
The oil rig explosion, killing eleven workers, and massive spill taking out lord-knows how much wildlife, and poisoning the LA wetlands and shoreline for an indeterminate time is the big dose of reality we Americans need to face. If we want oil we are going to have to accept that there will be occurrences like this. I don’t say accident, I say ‘occurrence’ because what happened might have been preventable.
The flying fingers of blame point to a government agency, the Mineral Management Service (MMS), a Secretary of the Interior extremely thirsty for off-shore drilling, a President who touted for it with an assurance that all was safe in the hands of greater technology, not to leave out the corporation, British Petroleum, itself.
Were safety precautions, known and used by other drilling operations, disregarded because of costs? According to a Wall Street Journal article of April 28, “The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn't needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.” The article goes on to point out that regulators in two major oil-producing countries, Norway and Brazil, require them. According to environmental lawyer Mike Papantino, former vice-president Dick Cheney’s energy task force decided that the $500,000 switches were too expensive and BP wasn’t required to buy them. BP claims they’re not necessary because there are other back-up systems to prevent spills of this nature. How’s that workin’ for ya BP and MMS, as Palin would say?
Speaking of BP, Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen states that it has, “One of the worst safety records of any oil company operating in America. In just the last few years, BP has paid $485 million in fines and settlements to the US government for environmental crimes, willful neglect of worker safety rules, and penalties for manipulating energy markets.”
And speaking about other corporations involved in this disaster how about good ol’ Halliburton, the company responsible for the faulty cementing leading to the explosion? Even the maligned and notoriously lax U.S. Mineral Management Service reveals that cementing is “the single most important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period.” And as for former Colorado Senator Ken Salazar, now Secretary of the Interior, he has lobbied strenuously for increased offshore drilling and easing environmental regulations. It was MMS, a bureau of Salazar’s Department of Interior that issued BP and other oil companies categorical exclusions from Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) that might have pointed to the dangers of the deep-sea drilling operation. Mr. Salazar, as well as Mr. Obama have a lot to answer for.
However the responsibilities play out, of one thing we can be certain, other occurrences like this one will happen again. It will happen again because we are all addicted to oil. All of us, or at least 99.9 percent of us. That’s the plain truth. We burn it, use it to make all kinds of stuff we’ve come to depend on, and it’s how we live. Maybe some of us are more profligate, but we all share in our dependency on it. At least for the foreseeable future.
So we have to accept that rigs are going to blow somewhere on the planet that harbors rigs, and workers will die, and the unfortunate environment that’s in the way, animals and plants, other innocent victims, will pay a terrible price. That is the reality, and it applies to nuclear reactors as well, which when they blow will be a fatal error for millions of humans. It’s the cost of these kinds of energy.
The same reality applies to terrorist attacks – they will be tried. Safety is not assured. There is no way to guarantee security. It’s a fact of life. Measures can be taken to reduce the risks, but there’s nothing foolproof. And living in constant fear is no alternative. Being alive is a risky business.
And then the ordinary days lull you back to sleep, until another crazy thing comes along to wake you up. And how about that crazy stock market?
But it’s a Sunday afternoon, the rain is letting up, the dog is getting noudgy and it’s time to pick up a grilled chicken from the Mexican market. Thank the fates it’s an ordinary day.
Thanks to gregpalast.com and allenroland.com for additional information for this article.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
I’ve had so many jobs since I was eighteen I can barely remember a fraction of them in the ensuing fifty years. It’s usually the worst one that spring to mind, some lasting not even a full day, some far longer than ever expected or desired. Jobs I had in college were so great in number and brief in endurance it seems as if every week I was doing some mindless, boring task until getting the boot or quitting, and they all just shmush together in an amorphous glob stuck in some corner of my memory bank.
But one I had during the interminable college years was all too brief. I answered an ad to test a nasal decongestant for about a week, the only two qualifications being having a cold, and having the ability to breathe. I was eminently qualified for the second part, having been able to breathe successfully for the prior twenty years, and I faked the cold, which is easy when you have allergies. Imagine, getting paid for breathing! Where are you going to get a job like that … outside of politics?
Then on the flip side there were jobs I quit the same day I began. One such h beauty was at a ski slope exchanging ski boots for patron’s shoes. Started out easy enough. You gave the size ski boot requested, took the person’s shoes, tagged said shoes, put them on a shelf and gave said person the corresponding tag number. Piece of cake – at first. Then people started coming in thicker and faster, all in a big hurry to get out to the slopes. Pretty soon I was furiously searching for the right boot size, tagging the shoes and stashing them on the shelves as the lines got longer and the demand for rapid service increased. By the end of my morning shift I was grabbing, tagging and stashing so fast I never checked to make sure I was giving the corresponding tags to the right people. I was moving so rapidly to keep up with demand I’d hand out tags to any hands stuck out in front of me. Figuring I’d made dozens of mistakes in these first few hours I concluded the prudent thing to do was to quit, well, actually to quietly slink away before end of day when the skiers returned to claim their footwear. For all I know those people are still looking for their shoes and that was 30 years ago.
Then there was the job in college working as a file clerk for the ILGWU (International Ladies Garment Workers Union). I’d be handed a large stack of file folders, put them on a metal roller cart and wheel them into a cavernous room with row after row of floor to ceiling numbered metal shelves containing a gazillion files. The top row of course were well out of reach and only gotten to by using a rolling stair contraption like the ones in libraries.
That was the job. Find the right place for the file in the right row on the right shelf and repeat. And repeat, and repeat, until the boredom was palpably nauseating. I did last the whole day though, which I considered some kind of an endurance record, and at least some of the files made it to their rightful place.
Which brings me to the subject of jobs and work at a time in our fair land when the shortage of which is no laughing matter. Awful jobs abound, but having no work is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. We all know we can’t survive economically without a job, at least with some modicum of comfort. There is, thanks to those who fought for it, a safety net when there is no income and not the wherewithal to meet bills and expenses, but such a bare subsistence level is nothing one wants to have to face. And yet far too many of our fellow countrymen/women are in this camp. I suppose it’s an accomplishment that we do not let people go without food or shelter in our country – there are agencies and facilities that provide for those in need – though when one drops to that bottom level of threadbare existence the prospects must be grim, bordering on hopeless.
But work is so much more than a job or wages. It’s so much a part of our identity, who we are, our sense of self-worth or even our reason for being. For so many of us, work gives us meaning – no matter what the task. It can be our source of pride, of fulfillment; the deep sense of usefulness. Even if and when one no longer needs to earn a living and can retire to a life of pure self-indulgence, it seems all too often that without the need to work, at something, one withers and dies. It could be said that the human need to work, to engage with life at some level, even if it’s cerebral and intellectual is as hard-wired into our DNA as the other imperatives.
Goofing off is great, and here I speak with some authority. Vacations are splendid, and simply doing nothing, woolgathering or stargazing can be sublime, but not for long. Sooner or later the urge to be doing something, to be working at something, arises, and one gets back on the wheel and picks up a hammer or a broom or a pen and sets about some task. It’s an integral part of being a human.
Which is why we invest so much of our lives in working, doing jobs, even when we’re not paid for it. It drives volunteerism – the need to be useful to some one or for some thing. Somewhere along the line of my life I learned a most important lesson, and that was it’s not the job that matters, no matter how odious that work might seem, but the attitude toward that work and the decision to do it to the best of one’s ability that matters. Herein lies self-respect.
For these and myriad reasons it’s now so important that jobs be generated and people put back to work. This is the government’s primary tack at this time; to get Americans working again, not just for the sake of the economy – that amorphous concept we all talk about and barely understand – but for our people to feel whole again.
Millions of us, individuals and families, whole communities were mugged, rolled, robbed and left for dead by a bunch of venal crooks in Armani suits and Gucci loafers. Well-dressed con men, but fraudulent cheats nonetheless; many of them the same high-paid hucksters Bush gave tax breaks. One or two, a Madoff or a Ken Lay go to jail, but the vast majority gets even bigger bonuses, and continues to scheme new ways to fleece us sheep. Why aren’t our jails overflowing with these low-life miscreants?
It’s no wonder people get apoplectic, don ridiculous costumes and rail against government, even when the administration in power wasn’t the one to blame. And it’s no laughing matter when the unhinged and the violence-prone among them are further incited by hate-mongers and the political stooges who fan these flames. It’s a dangerous time in our country when the deranged and the closet racists are easily manipulated and their furor turns to violence.
If President Obama, a well-meaning and temperate fellow in my estimation, wants to restore our country to some semblance of normalcy, he’ll follow in the footsteps of FDR when he took the wheel and got the masses of unemployed working and productive again. And then, if he’s half the man FDR was, he’ll come down really hard on Wall Street and the big corporations that have been screwing the public with reckless abandon since the restrictions and regulations were s__t-canned by Reagan in the 80s and Clinton in the 90s. But that’s for another little fireside chat.
But one I had during the interminable college years was all too brief. I answered an ad to test a nasal decongestant for about a week, the only two qualifications being having a cold, and having the ability to breathe. I was eminently qualified for the second part, having been able to breathe successfully for the prior twenty years, and I faked the cold, which is easy when you have allergies. Imagine, getting paid for breathing! Where are you going to get a job like that … outside of politics?
Then on the flip side there were jobs I quit the same day I began. One such h beauty was at a ski slope exchanging ski boots for patron’s shoes. Started out easy enough. You gave the size ski boot requested, took the person’s shoes, tagged said shoes, put them on a shelf and gave said person the corresponding tag number. Piece of cake – at first. Then people started coming in thicker and faster, all in a big hurry to get out to the slopes. Pretty soon I was furiously searching for the right boot size, tagging the shoes and stashing them on the shelves as the lines got longer and the demand for rapid service increased. By the end of my morning shift I was grabbing, tagging and stashing so fast I never checked to make sure I was giving the corresponding tags to the right people. I was moving so rapidly to keep up with demand I’d hand out tags to any hands stuck out in front of me. Figuring I’d made dozens of mistakes in these first few hours I concluded the prudent thing to do was to quit, well, actually to quietly slink away before end of day when the skiers returned to claim their footwear. For all I know those people are still looking for their shoes and that was 30 years ago.
Then there was the job in college working as a file clerk for the ILGWU (International Ladies Garment Workers Union). I’d be handed a large stack of file folders, put them on a metal roller cart and wheel them into a cavernous room with row after row of floor to ceiling numbered metal shelves containing a gazillion files. The top row of course were well out of reach and only gotten to by using a rolling stair contraption like the ones in libraries.
That was the job. Find the right place for the file in the right row on the right shelf and repeat. And repeat, and repeat, until the boredom was palpably nauseating. I did last the whole day though, which I considered some kind of an endurance record, and at least some of the files made it to their rightful place.
Which brings me to the subject of jobs and work at a time in our fair land when the shortage of which is no laughing matter. Awful jobs abound, but having no work is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. We all know we can’t survive economically without a job, at least with some modicum of comfort. There is, thanks to those who fought for it, a safety net when there is no income and not the wherewithal to meet bills and expenses, but such a bare subsistence level is nothing one wants to have to face. And yet far too many of our fellow countrymen/women are in this camp. I suppose it’s an accomplishment that we do not let people go without food or shelter in our country – there are agencies and facilities that provide for those in need – though when one drops to that bottom level of threadbare existence the prospects must be grim, bordering on hopeless.
But work is so much more than a job or wages. It’s so much a part of our identity, who we are, our sense of self-worth or even our reason for being. For so many of us, work gives us meaning – no matter what the task. It can be our source of pride, of fulfillment; the deep sense of usefulness. Even if and when one no longer needs to earn a living and can retire to a life of pure self-indulgence, it seems all too often that without the need to work, at something, one withers and dies. It could be said that the human need to work, to engage with life at some level, even if it’s cerebral and intellectual is as hard-wired into our DNA as the other imperatives.
Goofing off is great, and here I speak with some authority. Vacations are splendid, and simply doing nothing, woolgathering or stargazing can be sublime, but not for long. Sooner or later the urge to be doing something, to be working at something, arises, and one gets back on the wheel and picks up a hammer or a broom or a pen and sets about some task. It’s an integral part of being a human.
Which is why we invest so much of our lives in working, doing jobs, even when we’re not paid for it. It drives volunteerism – the need to be useful to some one or for some thing. Somewhere along the line of my life I learned a most important lesson, and that was it’s not the job that matters, no matter how odious that work might seem, but the attitude toward that work and the decision to do it to the best of one’s ability that matters. Herein lies self-respect.
For these and myriad reasons it’s now so important that jobs be generated and people put back to work. This is the government’s primary tack at this time; to get Americans working again, not just for the sake of the economy – that amorphous concept we all talk about and barely understand – but for our people to feel whole again.
Millions of us, individuals and families, whole communities were mugged, rolled, robbed and left for dead by a bunch of venal crooks in Armani suits and Gucci loafers. Well-dressed con men, but fraudulent cheats nonetheless; many of them the same high-paid hucksters Bush gave tax breaks. One or two, a Madoff or a Ken Lay go to jail, but the vast majority gets even bigger bonuses, and continues to scheme new ways to fleece us sheep. Why aren’t our jails overflowing with these low-life miscreants?
It’s no wonder people get apoplectic, don ridiculous costumes and rail against government, even when the administration in power wasn’t the one to blame. And it’s no laughing matter when the unhinged and the violence-prone among them are further incited by hate-mongers and the political stooges who fan these flames. It’s a dangerous time in our country when the deranged and the closet racists are easily manipulated and their furor turns to violence.
If President Obama, a well-meaning and temperate fellow in my estimation, wants to restore our country to some semblance of normalcy, he’ll follow in the footsteps of FDR when he took the wheel and got the masses of unemployed working and productive again. And then, if he’s half the man FDR was, he’ll come down really hard on Wall Street and the big corporations that have been screwing the public with reckless abandon since the restrictions and regulations were s__t-canned by Reagan in the 80s and Clinton in the 90s. But that’s for another little fireside chat.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
End of an Era
It began with an assassination and it ended with an assassination. John F. Kennedy was murdered in 1963, and John Lennon was murdered in 1980. The time encompassed what is commonly referred to as “The Sixties,” which, I posit, started in the 1950s and ended at the dawn of the 1980s. Here’s the reasoning: The spirit of the 60s began with the Civil Rights Movement – boycotts in the South; the Freedom Riders; sit-ins; the murders of children in churches and the other infamous, brutal murders in retaliation to the movement for rights, – which started in earnest in the 50s. The 1970s saw the culmination of the Vietnam War, the rise of the anti-war movement, SDS and student unrest, Women’s Liberation, the mind-altering drug scene well entrenched, and the burst of creative energy and music pinnacles that all but died by 1980; the dawn of disco.
Nonetheless, it was an incredible short span of time that presaged and in fact cemented major changes in our culture and society. Some of these shifts in thinking and behavior transformed what had been the accepted ways and norms for centuries before, others reflected a realization that humanity, a certain portion of it at least, experiences heightened times of creative artistic expression during certain periods of time. From an historical perspective it seems to come in spurts, for reasons that can only be speculated. Perhaps such times of artistic creativity are intertwined with politico-socio and cultural changes, and perhaps each drives the other. This seemed to be the case with that time we call The Sixties.
Rock ‘n Roll shook things up in the mid-Fifties – simple melodies, heavy beat and vapid lyrics – and at the same time there was a renewed interest in folk music by contemporary artists who added new expressions to the old base of protest, and sometimes prayerful, music. What RnR lacked – meaningful lyrics; songs about something – the new folk music had in abundance. Rock and folk began to overlap and blend as the war in Vietnam took hold and young men faced the draft. A nation’s attention turned to its young men, and families with eligible sons and brothers, and more and more the music became about what was happening in the country and its impacts on the citizenry. The music became a commentary on the times, and a loud expression of questioning and discontent, dissent and rebellion. Music’s heroes caught the essence and the spirit of what younger people were feeling, and used music as a way to inform, stir and unite. There was a rebellion going on in parts of the country and in some of its citizenry, and the music became a focal point and a sound track to the events of the time: JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, LBJ’s terrible lie, Nixon’s madness, 1968 in Chicago, ’69 at Woodstock, and a renewed drive toward expanding civil rights for all excluded segments of society. The music and the times were inextricably intertwined.
Maybe what we incorrectly label The Sixties, covered a span of 25 years: 1955 to 1980. These were the times of fundamental transformation from how we believed, thought and behaved, and its repercussions are with us today, thirty years later. Sure there were events and stirrings in the country before the 1950s upon which later events would arise and were the results of. Ending segregation and bestowing full citizenship on women and minorities had antecedents in earlier times and struggled over decades to reach fruition, but the apex and turning point of these movements did not happen until the Sixties. The war ended ignominiously in the Seventies. Peoples’ thinking changed during these dynamic times, the effects of which are felt today, though we pay it less mind because what had been new ideas about culture have become commonplace. And that’s progress. And, yes, progress and regression often seem to be in constant conflict. That just seems to be the way people, societies, are. We progress incrementally; much to the frustration of those who want to move faster toward completing the goals that arose half a century ago.
An era bracketed by two deaths. One man represented a dream of a new kingdom, and new and vibrant Camelot on the hill that would replace the old way of doing things. Like all dreams it was largely fantasy, a concocted chimera to dazzle and eventually manipulate, and like such dreams … it sounded good to a people who wanted change. The other man’s premature death, the other John, signaled the end of the dream. He told us this plainly. The Dream is Over. No more Beatles or belief that things do not change. No more reliance on icons and false images, and identification with saviors or heroes for your hopes and expectations. Believe in yourselves, he told us at the end. That’s what he was going to do. He was going to find out who he actually was, what kind of person he was, once detached from habitual beliefs. I think he wanted us to know there was a better way and that we have to find it on our own. Or as Dylan said, “Don’t trust leaders, watch your parking meters.” It was, all in all, a hell of an era.
Nonetheless, it was an incredible short span of time that presaged and in fact cemented major changes in our culture and society. Some of these shifts in thinking and behavior transformed what had been the accepted ways and norms for centuries before, others reflected a realization that humanity, a certain portion of it at least, experiences heightened times of creative artistic expression during certain periods of time. From an historical perspective it seems to come in spurts, for reasons that can only be speculated. Perhaps such times of artistic creativity are intertwined with politico-socio and cultural changes, and perhaps each drives the other. This seemed to be the case with that time we call The Sixties.
Rock ‘n Roll shook things up in the mid-Fifties – simple melodies, heavy beat and vapid lyrics – and at the same time there was a renewed interest in folk music by contemporary artists who added new expressions to the old base of protest, and sometimes prayerful, music. What RnR lacked – meaningful lyrics; songs about something – the new folk music had in abundance. Rock and folk began to overlap and blend as the war in Vietnam took hold and young men faced the draft. A nation’s attention turned to its young men, and families with eligible sons and brothers, and more and more the music became about what was happening in the country and its impacts on the citizenry. The music became a commentary on the times, and a loud expression of questioning and discontent, dissent and rebellion. Music’s heroes caught the essence and the spirit of what younger people were feeling, and used music as a way to inform, stir and unite. There was a rebellion going on in parts of the country and in some of its citizenry, and the music became a focal point and a sound track to the events of the time: JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, LBJ’s terrible lie, Nixon’s madness, 1968 in Chicago, ’69 at Woodstock, and a renewed drive toward expanding civil rights for all excluded segments of society. The music and the times were inextricably intertwined.
Maybe what we incorrectly label The Sixties, covered a span of 25 years: 1955 to 1980. These were the times of fundamental transformation from how we believed, thought and behaved, and its repercussions are with us today, thirty years later. Sure there were events and stirrings in the country before the 1950s upon which later events would arise and were the results of. Ending segregation and bestowing full citizenship on women and minorities had antecedents in earlier times and struggled over decades to reach fruition, but the apex and turning point of these movements did not happen until the Sixties. The war ended ignominiously in the Seventies. Peoples’ thinking changed during these dynamic times, the effects of which are felt today, though we pay it less mind because what had been new ideas about culture have become commonplace. And that’s progress. And, yes, progress and regression often seem to be in constant conflict. That just seems to be the way people, societies, are. We progress incrementally; much to the frustration of those who want to move faster toward completing the goals that arose half a century ago.
An era bracketed by two deaths. One man represented a dream of a new kingdom, and new and vibrant Camelot on the hill that would replace the old way of doing things. Like all dreams it was largely fantasy, a concocted chimera to dazzle and eventually manipulate, and like such dreams … it sounded good to a people who wanted change. The other man’s premature death, the other John, signaled the end of the dream. He told us this plainly. The Dream is Over. No more Beatles or belief that things do not change. No more reliance on icons and false images, and identification with saviors or heroes for your hopes and expectations. Believe in yourselves, he told us at the end. That’s what he was going to do. He was going to find out who he actually was, what kind of person he was, once detached from habitual beliefs. I think he wanted us to know there was a better way and that we have to find it on our own. Or as Dylan said, “Don’t trust leaders, watch your parking meters.” It was, all in all, a hell of an era.
Monday, February 22, 2010
J.D. and Me
I first met J.D. Salinger back in the 7th or 8th grade; can’t remember exactly. Not the author, of course, but his (perhaps) alter ego, Holden Caulfield, the catcher in the rye. It would have been around 1953,4. Ike was President. “I Like Ike,” said his campaign buttons, but my family, being good New York Democrats, liked Adlai; not much rhyme there.
The Korean War, which wasn’t a “war” despite the fact that lots of people fighting in it were dying, was either winding down or over, as I recall. It made the news sporadically, and it was only newspapers and radio in those days, TV not yet ubiquitous. The so-called Cold War was going on, and we learned about using the subways as air-raid shelters, and practiced ducking under our school desks in case the Russians had decided to drop a nuclear bomb on us – as we had on the Japanese. It was an uncertain time in the country and in my own life as well. And then Holden, his cap on backward, came along.
I went to a private school in NYC, my hometown, from the 2nd grade through the senior year in high school. The 2nd grade class I first entered was small. I don’t think there were more than 15 kids in it, probably fewer, and all boys. Private schools, usually called prep schools, were segregated by sex, economic class and racially as well, though there might be token minorities from wealthier families, or scions of well-off families from Latin American countries. But, like Holden’s prep school, these were (almost) all white, all same sex, middle and upper class bastions of privilege, and all were rigidly hierarchical. Acceptance of and obeisance to authority was the mind-set of the day, as was so in the past and would remain so for some years to come.
Coming into this school in the 2nd grade I was a newcomer. Most of the others had been there since kindergarten. It took awhile to make friends, not being an outgoing type, quite the opposite in fact, but I did fall in with a small clique of boys, three or four of them. We connected through sports, which I always loved and still do. We remained a tight coterie for five years, until the 7th grade. Then there was a falling out among this band, and they kicked me out of their midst. It seems so trivial now, almost 60 years later, but at the time it was quite devastating. I went from five or six close friends, kids I’d known since the 2nd grade, to no friends in a class of about 30 by then. Not a fun time. Then I met Holden and we became friends.
He said out loud what I’d only thought. He explained my inchoate thoughts and feelings to me: the resentment, the longing to stay a child though on the cusp of adulthood, or feelings of tenderness or longing that could never be allowed expression no less even harbored. He spotted the phonies, of which I’d been one, and he felt things that weren’t permitted in the world I knew, where authority wasn’t questioned and hypocrisy wasn’t made evident. No one said what he or she felt or what he or she really thought. We’d been programmed entirely differently. And Holden walked into my isolation and alienation and unexpressed longings, and in a sense saved me. It saved me from being alone, knowing that someone out there knew and understood an adolescent’s misery. A catcher in the rye.
J.D. Salinger died this year, 2010, an old man in his 90s, an enigma and self-imposed recluse. I read recently that early on, when he and his books first became renowned, he enjoyed his celebrity. That may be true, but it didn’t stay that way for long. For most of his life, Salinger eschewed celebrity, notoriety or accessibility. In fact he jealously guarded his privacy and remained outside and apart from any need for attention; certainly a rare bird in today’s world of desperate “Look at me!”
I’ve read his books, more than once, and as so many others waited for the next one that was never to come. Rumors abound that he continued to write even after he’d stopped publishing, that there are books and other manuscripts secreted somewhere where he lived in New Hampshire or some other place, and perhaps may get published some day. But that’s all just speculation as of now. Maybe in death J.D. will stay as mysterious and as inaccessible as he did in life. Maybe he just no longer needed acclaim, or felt the desire to express what he thought and felt. Perhaps his Buddhism had brought him to that place of detachment and unconcern with achievement or recognition or any of the morsels ego feeds on. Whatever his motives for reclusion, or need to be apart from the world’s goings on, will probably stay a mystery unless it’s revealed in some future publication of his writing; if in fact there is any.
So one is left to sit and wonder what becomes of Holden, or Franny, or Zooey and the whole Glass family. Which one was Salinger, or was he more likely all of them? Why did the teacher quit teaching? Was he fed up with us; with himself, what he saw all around him in the news of the world? It must have seeped through his fortress of solitude. Then a thought comes up – if he truly wanted anonymity why not live in another country? Why burrow in rural New Hampshire where, sooner or later, some will seek you out? Or was that part of the plot? Was he saying, “If you want me, truly want me, you’ll have to come and get me?” It seems that some did, and he was a man with a wife and family, so he was known to a privileged few. What he was like as an ordinary person is anybody’s guess, but I’ll always admire that he chose ordinariness and what must have been a plain existence in isolated countryside. Life comes down to routine and immediate relationships in such slow changing settings, and the distractions constantly dangled before us can be shut off, or at least limited,
I have a hunch he continued to write. Where his thoughts took him, what he wanted to observe, how he wanted to construct a story, what he thought he might say to us is, again, anybody’s guess. But I, for one, want to know.
This guy, in the guise of a disillusioned teenager, had entered my life, crossed my path, and made me see things differently. I was spoken to by someone I felt in league with, and who understood what a shitty place the world could be sometimes, and who would easily comprehend your pain. At the same time he sparked the rebellion and resistance you felt but kept at bay. He unlocked the resentment and anger that lay just under the surface, about being shoved forward, competing for some prize that must be had, or following some path that had to be taken. There was this driving pressure to become something, someone, when what you wanted was to slow down and find out who you were. Holden understood this. He understood me. It’s become a life-long pact this connection to the character and the author who fathered him. Enough of Holden rubbed off on me then to last a lifetime, and for that I’m grateful. But, oh, how I’d love to know what old J.D.’s been thinking about all these years.
The Korean War, which wasn’t a “war” despite the fact that lots of people fighting in it were dying, was either winding down or over, as I recall. It made the news sporadically, and it was only newspapers and radio in those days, TV not yet ubiquitous. The so-called Cold War was going on, and we learned about using the subways as air-raid shelters, and practiced ducking under our school desks in case the Russians had decided to drop a nuclear bomb on us – as we had on the Japanese. It was an uncertain time in the country and in my own life as well. And then Holden, his cap on backward, came along.
I went to a private school in NYC, my hometown, from the 2nd grade through the senior year in high school. The 2nd grade class I first entered was small. I don’t think there were more than 15 kids in it, probably fewer, and all boys. Private schools, usually called prep schools, were segregated by sex, economic class and racially as well, though there might be token minorities from wealthier families, or scions of well-off families from Latin American countries. But, like Holden’s prep school, these were (almost) all white, all same sex, middle and upper class bastions of privilege, and all were rigidly hierarchical. Acceptance of and obeisance to authority was the mind-set of the day, as was so in the past and would remain so for some years to come.
Coming into this school in the 2nd grade I was a newcomer. Most of the others had been there since kindergarten. It took awhile to make friends, not being an outgoing type, quite the opposite in fact, but I did fall in with a small clique of boys, three or four of them. We connected through sports, which I always loved and still do. We remained a tight coterie for five years, until the 7th grade. Then there was a falling out among this band, and they kicked me out of their midst. It seems so trivial now, almost 60 years later, but at the time it was quite devastating. I went from five or six close friends, kids I’d known since the 2nd grade, to no friends in a class of about 30 by then. Not a fun time. Then I met Holden and we became friends.
He said out loud what I’d only thought. He explained my inchoate thoughts and feelings to me: the resentment, the longing to stay a child though on the cusp of adulthood, or feelings of tenderness or longing that could never be allowed expression no less even harbored. He spotted the phonies, of which I’d been one, and he felt things that weren’t permitted in the world I knew, where authority wasn’t questioned and hypocrisy wasn’t made evident. No one said what he or she felt or what he or she really thought. We’d been programmed entirely differently. And Holden walked into my isolation and alienation and unexpressed longings, and in a sense saved me. It saved me from being alone, knowing that someone out there knew and understood an adolescent’s misery. A catcher in the rye.
J.D. Salinger died this year, 2010, an old man in his 90s, an enigma and self-imposed recluse. I read recently that early on, when he and his books first became renowned, he enjoyed his celebrity. That may be true, but it didn’t stay that way for long. For most of his life, Salinger eschewed celebrity, notoriety or accessibility. In fact he jealously guarded his privacy and remained outside and apart from any need for attention; certainly a rare bird in today’s world of desperate “Look at me!”
I’ve read his books, more than once, and as so many others waited for the next one that was never to come. Rumors abound that he continued to write even after he’d stopped publishing, that there are books and other manuscripts secreted somewhere where he lived in New Hampshire or some other place, and perhaps may get published some day. But that’s all just speculation as of now. Maybe in death J.D. will stay as mysterious and as inaccessible as he did in life. Maybe he just no longer needed acclaim, or felt the desire to express what he thought and felt. Perhaps his Buddhism had brought him to that place of detachment and unconcern with achievement or recognition or any of the morsels ego feeds on. Whatever his motives for reclusion, or need to be apart from the world’s goings on, will probably stay a mystery unless it’s revealed in some future publication of his writing; if in fact there is any.
So one is left to sit and wonder what becomes of Holden, or Franny, or Zooey and the whole Glass family. Which one was Salinger, or was he more likely all of them? Why did the teacher quit teaching? Was he fed up with us; with himself, what he saw all around him in the news of the world? It must have seeped through his fortress of solitude. Then a thought comes up – if he truly wanted anonymity why not live in another country? Why burrow in rural New Hampshire where, sooner or later, some will seek you out? Or was that part of the plot? Was he saying, “If you want me, truly want me, you’ll have to come and get me?” It seems that some did, and he was a man with a wife and family, so he was known to a privileged few. What he was like as an ordinary person is anybody’s guess, but I’ll always admire that he chose ordinariness and what must have been a plain existence in isolated countryside. Life comes down to routine and immediate relationships in such slow changing settings, and the distractions constantly dangled before us can be shut off, or at least limited,
I have a hunch he continued to write. Where his thoughts took him, what he wanted to observe, how he wanted to construct a story, what he thought he might say to us is, again, anybody’s guess. But I, for one, want to know.
This guy, in the guise of a disillusioned teenager, had entered my life, crossed my path, and made me see things differently. I was spoken to by someone I felt in league with, and who understood what a shitty place the world could be sometimes, and who would easily comprehend your pain. At the same time he sparked the rebellion and resistance you felt but kept at bay. He unlocked the resentment and anger that lay just under the surface, about being shoved forward, competing for some prize that must be had, or following some path that had to be taken. There was this driving pressure to become something, someone, when what you wanted was to slow down and find out who you were. Holden understood this. He understood me. It’s become a life-long pact this connection to the character and the author who fathered him. Enough of Holden rubbed off on me then to last a lifetime, and for that I’m grateful. But, oh, how I’d love to know what old J.D.’s been thinking about all these years.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
A Different Take on Change
It’s time for a major change and probably half of our population isn’t going to like it. Here’s the change: It’s time that women take over leadership in the U.S. No, wait a minute, make that the whole world. Why, you ask – I’ll tell you why.
Women are probably smarter than men or at least intellectual equals. Everyone who’s been in our school system, which is just about everyone in the U.S., knows this. Historically they were excluded from the academic world and were therefore at a disadvantage, but when given the chance to compete with men at basic and higher education they’ve proven equal or better at such learning skills.
Women are by and large emotionally more mature and less aggressive than men. Look around, with some minor exceptions it’s plain to see. Women don’t usually start wars, fight in armies, join gangs bent on violence, and try to physically impose their will, intimidate, or coerce others. Women like to talk about things; men like to hit each other. Men’s aggressive and violent nature has led humanity to constantly wage war, exploit and subjugate the weaker, and generally has caused mayhem and misery wherever their path has led. Can there be any denial of this?
Yes, yes, there are some exceptions in both sexes one can always bring up: women warriors, women tyrants, psychopathic and sociopathic women throughout history, as well as men who don’t behave as aforementioned, but in aggregate this percentage in any society is so small as to be statistically insignificant. Women tend not to destroy and tear asunder, but to build and maintain. Men like blowing the crap out of things.
Maybe all this is biological – genetic, chemical and/or psychological, but the fact remains women are superior when it comes to valuing life and men are superior when it comes to destroying life forms. Women tend to cooperate, men tend to compete. Which attribute do you think is more conducive to a (reasonably) sane and harmonious world? Which attribute is likely to lead to conservation and which to annihilation? What has the history of men as leaders and the dominant sex shown us? Men have become so proficient at aggression and destruction that they’ve created the very weapons that can, in one afternoon, reduce almost all life on the planet to ashes and ruin; forever lethally polluted with radioactivity. We know this to be a fact.
So in light of everything we know to be true about men and women, played out over millennia, it’s time for a radical change. All leadership positions – government, industry, education, health care – you name it, has to be turned over to women. And here’s the kicker; even the head of household roll. Ooh, that must hurt, guy readers.
But freak out not, guys, there’s plenty for us to do. Most of it involves upper body strength, but not everything. Let’s look at this logically. What are we best at? Yes, drinking beer or wine or whatever and getting loaded; getting all juiced up on sports; arguing; showing off; having pissing contests for arc and distance, and screwing or imagining screwing every female on the planet. Oh yeah, and barbeque. I think that about covers it; the important stuff anyway.
So that still leaves us with what to do. What should guys be doing all day? How about housework? Upper body strength is very handy for this. Farm work? Yes, by all means, perfectly suited. There’s construction and environmental reclamation. There’s public safety work – police, fire, crossing guards, etc., – and men can still be doctors, lawyers, CPAs, teachers and the like; they just can’t run any hospitals or firms or organizations. That’s the lady’s; excuse me, the women’s domain.
Sports are still totally open to guys, but they can’t own any teams. The women owners and CEOs will make the trades for players, and in the long run it’ll probably be a more even playing field vis-à-vis team strength. Guys can still own small businesses and do their club things – Moose, Rotary, Lions, etc. – play softball, touch football or basketball on weekends and pretend they’re pros, and coach and talk about sports endlessly, as always.
There’s other stuff guys can do and are equipped for, but I’m afraid shopping is not one; for that we need robots, but when it comes to leading the country or making big decisions that affect populaces, uh unh. One small exception would be installing Sarah Palin in any leadership position; we’re talking qualified women here with reasonable intelligence. Guys, we’ve had our turn for tens of thousands of years, and we all know that slightly below the surface, or blatantly outright we’re still barbarians.
So suck it up, guys, it’s time the women took over. They can’t possibly do any worse than we have and odds are they’ll do a lot better and we’ll all be happier. If they screw it up in the coming millennia we’ll talk about a change then.
Women are probably smarter than men or at least intellectual equals. Everyone who’s been in our school system, which is just about everyone in the U.S., knows this. Historically they were excluded from the academic world and were therefore at a disadvantage, but when given the chance to compete with men at basic and higher education they’ve proven equal or better at such learning skills.
Women are by and large emotionally more mature and less aggressive than men. Look around, with some minor exceptions it’s plain to see. Women don’t usually start wars, fight in armies, join gangs bent on violence, and try to physically impose their will, intimidate, or coerce others. Women like to talk about things; men like to hit each other. Men’s aggressive and violent nature has led humanity to constantly wage war, exploit and subjugate the weaker, and generally has caused mayhem and misery wherever their path has led. Can there be any denial of this?
Yes, yes, there are some exceptions in both sexes one can always bring up: women warriors, women tyrants, psychopathic and sociopathic women throughout history, as well as men who don’t behave as aforementioned, but in aggregate this percentage in any society is so small as to be statistically insignificant. Women tend not to destroy and tear asunder, but to build and maintain. Men like blowing the crap out of things.
Maybe all this is biological – genetic, chemical and/or psychological, but the fact remains women are superior when it comes to valuing life and men are superior when it comes to destroying life forms. Women tend to cooperate, men tend to compete. Which attribute do you think is more conducive to a (reasonably) sane and harmonious world? Which attribute is likely to lead to conservation and which to annihilation? What has the history of men as leaders and the dominant sex shown us? Men have become so proficient at aggression and destruction that they’ve created the very weapons that can, in one afternoon, reduce almost all life on the planet to ashes and ruin; forever lethally polluted with radioactivity. We know this to be a fact.
So in light of everything we know to be true about men and women, played out over millennia, it’s time for a radical change. All leadership positions – government, industry, education, health care – you name it, has to be turned over to women. And here’s the kicker; even the head of household roll. Ooh, that must hurt, guy readers.
But freak out not, guys, there’s plenty for us to do. Most of it involves upper body strength, but not everything. Let’s look at this logically. What are we best at? Yes, drinking beer or wine or whatever and getting loaded; getting all juiced up on sports; arguing; showing off; having pissing contests for arc and distance, and screwing or imagining screwing every female on the planet. Oh yeah, and barbeque. I think that about covers it; the important stuff anyway.
So that still leaves us with what to do. What should guys be doing all day? How about housework? Upper body strength is very handy for this. Farm work? Yes, by all means, perfectly suited. There’s construction and environmental reclamation. There’s public safety work – police, fire, crossing guards, etc., – and men can still be doctors, lawyers, CPAs, teachers and the like; they just can’t run any hospitals or firms or organizations. That’s the lady’s; excuse me, the women’s domain.
Sports are still totally open to guys, but they can’t own any teams. The women owners and CEOs will make the trades for players, and in the long run it’ll probably be a more even playing field vis-à-vis team strength. Guys can still own small businesses and do their club things – Moose, Rotary, Lions, etc. – play softball, touch football or basketball on weekends and pretend they’re pros, and coach and talk about sports endlessly, as always.
There’s other stuff guys can do and are equipped for, but I’m afraid shopping is not one; for that we need robots, but when it comes to leading the country or making big decisions that affect populaces, uh unh. One small exception would be installing Sarah Palin in any leadership position; we’re talking qualified women here with reasonable intelligence. Guys, we’ve had our turn for tens of thousands of years, and we all know that slightly below the surface, or blatantly outright we’re still barbarians.
So suck it up, guys, it’s time the women took over. They can’t possibly do any worse than we have and odds are they’ll do a lot better and we’ll all be happier. If they screw it up in the coming millennia we’ll talk about a change then.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Business of America
At long last the Supreme Court has made a decision that real Americans can get solidly behind and ended second-class citizenship for long-oppressed corporations. Restricted for decades, their freedom of speech curtailed and stifled, corporations could only spend limited amounts on election campaigns; a disgraceful defiling of their First Amendment rights. Not since their greatest hour – preventing Al Gore from becoming president – has the court triumphed in the cause of free-market democracy. Finally corporations, their tiny voices choked by the campaign finance reform fanatics, can be heard throughout the land. Their long-overdue full personhood has been established, and they are now free to speak their minds, and support with their heard-earned fortunes the righteous and deserving. Bite on that liberal Democratic (redundant?) surrender-monkeys.
Only trouble is they didn’t go far enough. Everyone knows corporations are persons and deserving of individual rights – so why can’t they vote, or run for office, or get married if they want? Why are corporations left out in the cold, their little noses pressed up against the glass window and excluded from the warm inner sanctum of full citizenship? This was a glaring oversight in jurisprudence, but it’s only a matter of time. Rejoice fellow real Americans and imagine the incredible mess we’d be in now if Gore had become president. One shudders to think. We’d all be forced to marry trees and put clothing on animals.
A wise person once said, “The business of America is business,” and boy is that ever right! America IS a business, and who better to run America Inc. than a corporate CEO? Do you want some non-profit, social worker do-gooder running the show? Somehow those types, the entitlement-crazed, civil liberties-demanding, labor-worshipping, human rights babblers have hi-jacked government and turned it into a peacenik day care center. But those days are over thanks to our Supremes.
And don’t fall for those Democratic alarmist scare tactics about foreign governments stoking corporations to buy elections and their candidates of choice. What possible motive could China, Saudi Arabia or N. Korea have in manipulating American politics? And don’t be swayed by accusations of “activist judges” and right wing hypocrisy; everyone knows” activist judge” only apples to liberals. And don’t forget, we are America Inc., and we are always looking out for and listening to you. Rest easy, corporate America has your back; and all your other parts as well.
Will Shonbrun is a Sonoma writer and trouble-maker. His work can be seen at: http://shonbrunreport.blogspot.com. His seminal treatises, “Will Shonbrun is Not a Lunatic” and “You Wouldn’t Fart in the Presence of God” are out of print, but if you email him at: willshonbrun@vom.com he’ll send you something.
Only trouble is they didn’t go far enough. Everyone knows corporations are persons and deserving of individual rights – so why can’t they vote, or run for office, or get married if they want? Why are corporations left out in the cold, their little noses pressed up against the glass window and excluded from the warm inner sanctum of full citizenship? This was a glaring oversight in jurisprudence, but it’s only a matter of time. Rejoice fellow real Americans and imagine the incredible mess we’d be in now if Gore had become president. One shudders to think. We’d all be forced to marry trees and put clothing on animals.
A wise person once said, “The business of America is business,” and boy is that ever right! America IS a business, and who better to run America Inc. than a corporate CEO? Do you want some non-profit, social worker do-gooder running the show? Somehow those types, the entitlement-crazed, civil liberties-demanding, labor-worshipping, human rights babblers have hi-jacked government and turned it into a peacenik day care center. But those days are over thanks to our Supremes.
And don’t fall for those Democratic alarmist scare tactics about foreign governments stoking corporations to buy elections and their candidates of choice. What possible motive could China, Saudi Arabia or N. Korea have in manipulating American politics? And don’t be swayed by accusations of “activist judges” and right wing hypocrisy; everyone knows” activist judge” only apples to liberals. And don’t forget, we are America Inc., and we are always looking out for and listening to you. Rest easy, corporate America has your back; and all your other parts as well.
Will Shonbrun is a Sonoma writer and trouble-maker. His work can be seen at: http://shonbrunreport.blogspot.com. His seminal treatises, “Will Shonbrun is Not a Lunatic” and “You Wouldn’t Fart in the Presence of God” are out of print, but if you email him at: willshonbrun@vom.com he’ll send you something.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
In Defense of Dueling
It’s time to bring back dueling. Yes, dueling, that ancient, time-honored way of settling disputes. It worked for our ancestors and even our revered founding fathers, save a fussy few, saw no problem with it. The trouble was women and others not considered full and equal citizens didn’t get to participate – another glaring weakness in our Constitutional system.
Now I know that some of the more weak-stomached, overly empathic, prissy rule-of-law types – read, Democrats, so-called progressives, organic tofu-munching, hybrid-driving, godless humanitarians et al. – might deem this a somewhat radical proposal. But consider: Dueling is totally bipartisan, non-discriminatory (with a little tweaking) as to gender, race, age, ethnicity or economic class, and American as apple pie and political corruption. Republicans, conservatives and libertarians should embrace it as it’s both very old school and keeps government’s nose out of our private affairs.
Democrats should welcome it as well as it would put an end to the tedious and bullying Senate filibuster. Furthermore it would hasten the settling of domestic disputes – women have a shooting gene as well; remember Annie Oakley? And it’s a handy way of dealing with one’s critics and other annoying malcontents.
In defense of dueling let us reflect on the service it lent our nation when the unfairly maligned Aaron Burr plugged ol’ Alex Hamilton before he could pen another of those nit-picking, elitist intellectual, legally dense Federalist Papers, which no one except Republican-appointed Supreme Court nominees has ever read. Think of the degree of honesty dueling would bring to all business transactions – used car deals, credit card disputes, stock brokers and insurance sellers, real estate peddlers and a wide range of corporate CEOs. It surely would make someone think twice before trying to sell some poor sucker a phony bill of goods; politicians and bankers take note.
And it’s economical: only financial outlay is for a gun, and any school kid knows how cheap and readily available these are, and some bullets, which you can pick up at Wal-Mart’s. I like the old one-shot deals that came as pairs in hand-tooled wooden boxes myself, but I’m a sentimentalist. Think how much time and money it would save in courts, trials and lawyers. Almost eliminates any need for tort reform.
So for pennies on the dollar and a way to shrink government and make it work more smoothly – nothing focuses a politician on the need for alacrity and cooperation like the threat of being drilled by a colleague or constituent – dueling is the logical choice.
Let’s not get turned aside by a few queasy feelings, let’s suck it up like the real Americans we used to be, and get behind the God-given right to kill for our beliefs, or grievances, or whatever. Just go to: bringbackdueling.com to lend your support, and donate to this worth cause.
Now I know that some of the more weak-stomached, overly empathic, prissy rule-of-law types – read, Democrats, so-called progressives, organic tofu-munching, hybrid-driving, godless humanitarians et al. – might deem this a somewhat radical proposal. But consider: Dueling is totally bipartisan, non-discriminatory (with a little tweaking) as to gender, race, age, ethnicity or economic class, and American as apple pie and political corruption. Republicans, conservatives and libertarians should embrace it as it’s both very old school and keeps government’s nose out of our private affairs.
Democrats should welcome it as well as it would put an end to the tedious and bullying Senate filibuster. Furthermore it would hasten the settling of domestic disputes – women have a shooting gene as well; remember Annie Oakley? And it’s a handy way of dealing with one’s critics and other annoying malcontents.
In defense of dueling let us reflect on the service it lent our nation when the unfairly maligned Aaron Burr plugged ol’ Alex Hamilton before he could pen another of those nit-picking, elitist intellectual, legally dense Federalist Papers, which no one except Republican-appointed Supreme Court nominees has ever read. Think of the degree of honesty dueling would bring to all business transactions – used car deals, credit card disputes, stock brokers and insurance sellers, real estate peddlers and a wide range of corporate CEOs. It surely would make someone think twice before trying to sell some poor sucker a phony bill of goods; politicians and bankers take note.
And it’s economical: only financial outlay is for a gun, and any school kid knows how cheap and readily available these are, and some bullets, which you can pick up at Wal-Mart’s. I like the old one-shot deals that came as pairs in hand-tooled wooden boxes myself, but I’m a sentimentalist. Think how much time and money it would save in courts, trials and lawyers. Almost eliminates any need for tort reform.
So for pennies on the dollar and a way to shrink government and make it work more smoothly – nothing focuses a politician on the need for alacrity and cooperation like the threat of being drilled by a colleague or constituent – dueling is the logical choice.
Let’s not get turned aside by a few queasy feelings, let’s suck it up like the real Americans we used to be, and get behind the God-given right to kill for our beliefs, or grievances, or whatever. Just go to: bringbackdueling.com to lend your support, and donate to this worth cause.
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