Taking a humorous but analytical look at just about anything in the spirit of Groucho Marx: I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member!
Showing posts with label Philosophical Musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophical Musings. Show all posts
And dressing it up in them in the first place is a BAD idea. Just as bad as the idea that PBS is now floating, according to a New York Times newspaper article I read in Friday's Omaha World-Herald, which also reported that the idea was broached last week to PBS member stations.
It's bad enough that (1) the "sponsor blocks" at the beginning and end of each program are looking ever more like broadcast TV ads [and indeed, some of them actually ARE those ads--Ed.]; (2) those "sponsor blocks" are taking up ever more time out of each hour's programming; (3) we have to endure pledge drives that used to run once a year, then twice, and now seemingly every other month. What's worse is that the smooth narrative flow of PBS programs would be hopelessly compromised, thus making PBS indistinguishable from any other network's programming.
Maybe this is an April Fool's Day joke by a procrastinator, though I doubt that. Maybe this is an idea the PBS executives are floating to scare member stations and members into giving more money as a result of the renewed vigor of the Republican Party's push to defund PBS. A more plausible notion, but rather more Machiavellian than I'd hope PBS executives are. Maybe we really ARE at the "end of days" and this is one more sign that the apocalypse is nigh. No . . . that's too paranoid, even for me. Most likely, however, it's the GOP's recognition that what cannot be done directly can be done indirectly. If the GOP cannot neuter PBS by defunding it, it can neuter PBS by making its programming indistinguishable from everyone else's, and further inure us to having microscopically short attention spans, to boot.
Whatever else it may be, however, it is definitely one thing: it's a BAD idea. So much so that, in a beautifully ironic twist, it ought to be the subject of a Geico automobile insurance commercial.
If PBS is going to make me watch sponsors' ads in the middle of PBS programming, I will stop watching and stop contributing to PBS. I'll just wait till PBS sells the programs to cable networks like the Discovery Channel, and watch them there. I can put up with pledge drives. I can put up with commercials. I will NOT put up with both during the same program.
I heard a most interesting segment on "This American Life" this morning (locally aired on KIOS, 91.5 FM). The theme of the show was superheroes and superpowers, and the specific segment to which I refer was one in which a gentleman [whose name escapes me--I obviously lack super memory--Ed.] spent some time asking everyone whether they'd rather have the power of flying or of being invisible. His calculations and conclusions were fascinating. He says more women than men prefer the idea of being invisible; more men than women prefer the idea of flying. He goes on to say, with support from several of the people he queried on the subject, that this is because people with something to hide prefer invisibility, and people who "let it all hang out" in terms of who they are prefer the power of flight.
Why I found this so fascinating was that, as usual, I don't fit in. When he first asked the question, I answered "flying." I was 100% certain; the rest of the segment did not change my mind; I said it promptly and out loud, which got quite a reaction from my cats Linus and Lucy, who were, after all, trying to have their morning nap (in the sunny spot in the dining room) in peace.
The auteur says there are 5 stages of decision, and while I don't have the exact titles he used, this is the rough equivalent of what they are: (1) initial choice; (2) justifications; (3) reconsideration; (4) bargaining; (5) final choice, which over 90% of the time wound up being the opposite of the initial choice. He also went on to say that almost everyone who chose invisibility admitted sooner or later that they'd use that power either to spy on family, co-workers, and friends, or to shoplift or watch naked people who thought they were in the privacy of their own showers and tubs.
Ask me how glad I am that I chose flying, immediately and without going through all the stages he set forth. It's nice to get confirmation every now and again that one's own view of oneself is correct, that one is neither lying to oneself or fooling oneself, and that the way one thinks one presents herself to the world is, in fact, the way one presents herself to the world.
Especially on the 28th anniversary of the day I made the most stupid mistake of all the stupid mistakes I've made in my life . . . yes, today, down to its being a Saturday, is the anniversary of the day I got married . . . to a man who doubtless would choose invisibility over flying every time. It took me 16 years (5 of knowing him, 11 of being married to him) to realize that he was not the open, frank, and above-board person I thought he was. In retrospect, I have come to realize that he was always hiding something. I don't think he could go even 24 hours without lying about something to someone. I think it gave him a sense of power, as in "I know something you don't know, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah." Yep, invisibility would have been right up his alley.
Realizing that makes me even more glad I was not only so quick to choose flying, but that I was so sure of that choice.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton again spoke very strongly of the need for the world to unite in holding North Korea accountable for the unjustifiable act of sinking a South Korean warship and killing its crew of 46. In reporting this during the 7:00 a.m. CDT broadcast of NPR's "Morning Edition," NPR newsman Paul Brown at one point started to say "North Caro--" before correcting himself and saying "North Korea."
I, of course, immediately thought of Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next?", his early Sixties' commentary on both nuclear proliferation and civil rights. Its tag line? "We'll try to stay serene and calm, when Alabama gets the bomb--Who's next?"
Once I stopped laughing, I marveled at how what goes around, comes around. Who'd have thought, nearly half a century later, with Rand Paul's case of foot-in-mouth and North Korea's eternal petulance, that both civil rights and nuclear proliferation would still be in the headlines?
I have to admit, I find it shocking that people are defending the majority's decision in the Supreme Court's overturning yesterday of campaign-financing reform laws. Nevertheless, reading some of the comments published online in response to various news reports about the decision, it seems the American public is just as divided as was the Court. And that leaves me once again frightened for the future of not just America, the country, but America, the idea.
I take a backseat to no one in my devotion to the First Amendment. Anyone who knows me at all knows I am a thoroughgoing champion of free speech and the free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and the right to petition the government. But anyone who knows me also knows that these freedoms do not include the right, for example, to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire--for the danger to the public safety of inciting panic outweighs the individual's right to say what he likes willy-nilly. For the same reason, the Founding Fathers always knew and recognized [read the Federalist Papers if you don't believe me--Ed.] that what they were protecting was political speech. Commercial speech, the right to hawk one's goods, as it were, was never intended to get the same level of protection. Otherwise, we'd have no truth in advertising laws, and people who were damaged by lies such as "oh, this product is 100% safe" when the product was, in fact, toxic, would have no legal recourse. Then again, in the days before the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, many people didn't care. What you don't know can't hurt you . . . except that it can, and frequently does.
But how anyone can equate a corporation with a living, breathing human being is utterly beyond me. We are the United States of America, not the United Corporations of America. Our system is "of the people, by the people, and for the people" not "of, by, and for the Corporation."
Corporations do not have the right to cast ballots in either primary or general elections. Corporations exist to make profits for their owners. They have no other raison d'etre. They do not care about right and wrong, good and bad, or any of the other higher concerns that motivate individual people. Corporations are at best amoral, artificial creatures, which do not exist outside the laws governing their creation and operation. Their behavior thus can be regulated according to the public will. Their only stake in our system of government is to do whatever they can within the law to minimize risk and maximize profit.
But they do have an inordinate amount of money to throw around, and that raw economic power alone puts them in opposition to being regulated by government. After all, when they can make an extra $10 per toy, for example, if they don't have to ensure that said toy is lead-free, they will not spend the money to make the toy lead-free . . . unless an outside regulatory force, government, makes them do so.
Government exists to do the things we as individuals cannot do for ourselves. In its own way, it's "the cost-effective" option. Better for us, as individuals, to have one government agency out there to test and regulate toys for lead content than to force every family in the country to buy lead-testing kits along with every single new toy. We ARE the government. Government is not our enemy. It is our agent, our collective representative. Its raison d'etre is to protect our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Corporations are not alive; they are not free (they don't exist except within the context of the laws); and happiness is NOT their pursuit. Their pursuit is to make money. The most money for the least possible cost. Period.
These are facts. They cannot be disputed. I concede that the implications of these facts are disputed, but too often the dispute is not about the merits of whatever is at issue. The dispute too often becomes a cover for expression of one's personal political proclivities at the expense of genuine discussion and debate. For example, the vast majority of the people posting comments supporting the Court's majority ruling takes a very bullying, schoolyard tone. Most of those people's comments do not rise above the level of name-calling and insulting those with whom they disagree. That alone suggests that those people are in the wrong, for if the facts are on your side, you should be stressing the facts, not making personal attacks on anyone else.
To all you who wrote in favor of the majority's ruling: you who say that this is a great victory for the First Amendment and truly free speech, and who believe that the Internet will protect the full expression and circulation of all ideas, are forgetting something: if the corporate owners of your access to the Internet decide to pull the plug, what will you do then?
Money in politics is like steroids in sports--especially baseball--it distorts everything in favor of those who have the most clout. Again, corporations are not people; corporations do not vote. What if all the shareholders but one in a corporation dislike the position the corporation has chosen to support financially, but the one shareholder has the controlling vote? The controlling shareholder thus essentially gets double expression of his idea since he can express it through his individual vote AND through the corporation's spending. All the other shareholders can cast their individual votes otherwise, but if the one shareholder, through his corporation's money's clout, has the ear of the people in office, they're going to listen to him, not the other shareholders. For they know that if they don't listen to him, he'll put his money and resources at the disposal of their political opponents. "Pay to play" and "get paid to play" will become the norm, not standing up for the larger public good.
If you disagree with this analysis, fine, but answer me this: if my analysis is so wrong, so off-the-beam, why do corporations spend millions and millions of dollars every day on lobbyists and advertising? Because lobbying and advertising work. Jane and John Q. Public's voices can hardly be heard above the din of all the money that's in the system now. Removing the few regulations that were in place until yesterday's ruling means the silencing of Jane and John for good. Maybe not in one fell swoop, but ultimately . . . what do they say in Las Vegas? "Money plays."
Money plays. Money wins. No longer will the best ideas win because of their intrinsic merits. The best ideas will never even get heard. The ideas that win will be the ideas that have the most money behind them. Furthermore, it is error to presume that getting tons of financial support is a sign of being the best idea. It is a sign only of the idea which is in the best interests of those with the most money to spend, which may be antithetical to the best interests of you and of me, we who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the system.
I was afraid this would happen back when the Court announced it would hear the case. I even wrote about it in this blog. See "Overshadowed In Yesterday's News," posted 9/10/09. I will say at this point that I am sick to death of the way EVERYTHING has become politicized in this country. Some things ought to be bigger than politics, and the fact that nothing any longer is saddens me. Maybe "America" cannot work, for the very freedoms it protects enable the seeds of its own destruction to sprout and grow. For my part, 99% of the hope I felt at this time last year has gone right down the drain.
To conclude with a bit of hyperbole: this Supreme Court ruling truly is the worst thing to happen to people as individuals since the Dred Scott case, for in effect, it makes you and me and every other person who is not a CEO or CFO de facto chattel of those who are. Not all at once, mind you. Just after our access to all ideas has been so squeezed and so circumscribed by those with the money, hence the power, to press incessantly for their points of view that we will be anesthetized or otherwise beaten into submission.
Still, in every "good" there is a "bad," and vice versa. At least the lie that "conservative" justices hew to "original intent" has been put to death once and for all. This ruling is activist in the extreme. Radical, I daresay. Not that that matters to the right-wingers who insist on politicizing everything. As far as they are concerned, it's only "activism" when they disagree with the outcome. Anyone with intellectual honesty and integrity, however, must admit that "activism" is "activism." It's only bad when it takes us (collectively, as a society) backwards and not forwards.
The speed at which time passes is flexible--rather, our perception of the speed at which time passes is flexible. Anyone who's ever been in a life-threatening crisis will testify to that. While the crisis is going on, time seems to stretch as though one is falling over the event horizon of a black hole. Once the crisis has passed, the putative victim is inevitably shocked to discover that what seemed like hours of agony really took but minutes, or even seconds, to pass.
I have been thinking a lot about the human brain's flexible response to the passage of time. I spent much of the first 60% of my life moving, not just from state to state, but overseas, once each to Southeast Asia and to Europe. The reality of being so frequently on the move not only helped me keep my own personal entropy under control; it helped me stay connected--plugged in, if you will--to the larger energy of world-wide events.
I have spent the subsequent 40% of my life to date living in one place. Yes, I've taken trips [though, mostly for logistical reasons connected to my lung disease, I've had to keep these trips to one day's length--Ed.], but somehow it's not the same. I still pay a great deal of attention to the events passing on the world's stage, and I still actively pursue learning so as better to evaluate the effects of those events on not just my life, but ultimately on history itself. But the sense of being "part of the flow" has vanished. And my own personal entropy has gotten totally out of hand.
Sometimes, I feel that even though I am still alive, my life is slipping away from me. I find that frightening. I'm not even distracted by the hum-drum of the minutiae of everyday living. I'm disconnecting from it. Some 40-year-old memories I have are more vivid in my brain than are memories I've generated in the past year. Maybe this should make me glad--I'm sure it reduces my levels of stress. But I cannot escape the vague sensation that somehow, it's very, very wrong, and I should fight it as hard and for as long as I can. I do not want to have to move, not ever again. But maybe it's exactly the physical jolt I need to overcome my mental entropy and the physical entropy surrounding me.
I am still quite good at working up some righteous anger over the injustices I see in the larger world, as anyone who's read more than one of these posts can attest. I have made it a habit of expressing my opinions and the reasons for them in more, and more diverse places. The beauty of a good idea is that once it's given expression, it's able to influence untold numbers in untold ways . . . not unlike the impact an excellent teacher can have on someone's life. Or such is my hope, that one of my little mental gems has sparkled and caught the attention of someone I don't even know, and that it has [in a way I cannot predict--Ed.] made a difference for the better in that person's life.
If this is mere dream or delusion, so be it. Leave me my dream, my delusion. It's all I have left.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Another odd thing about humanity's flexible perception of time involves anticipation. Note that anticipation is not necessarily a good thing. One may anticipate happy events that are to come, such as weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, reunions, what have you. But one may also anticipate upcoming appointments with dread, as I surmise the football players of Louisiana-Lafayette must have felt as their game against the mighty University of Nebraska, played yesterday, approached. Many people who watch the History Channel are getting all het up about the upcoming end of the world that's been predicted for 12/21/2012. Getting to yesterday must have felt that same way to the Ragin' Cajuns as they came to Lincoln to accept their drubbing at the hands of the Cornhuskers. If it wasn't the apocolypse, it was a pertect storm, and the Ragin' Cajuns knew they were plunging into its heart.
The factors creating this perfect storm? (1) Homecoming for the Huskers. Every team is hyper-hyped to win its homecoming game. The Huskers are no exception. (2) The 300th consecutive stadium home game sell-out in NU history. This is the longest active streak in NCAA history; Notre Dame holds the second-longest streak, at a 1/3 shorter 207 games. The only proper way to celebrate such a milestone is with a win--a BIG win. (3) Nebraska was coming off a loss, by one point, to Virginia Tech--a loss the Huskers let happen after having had the game in hand for about 58 of its 60-minute duration. Anyone who knows anything about Nebraska knows that the opponent facing NU the week after such a painful, self-inflicted defeat is going to be chewed up and spat out. And then stomped on. And then stomped on some more.
The final score was 55-0. Yes, Nebraska won. I hope the Ragin' Cajuns' share of the take from ticket sales and pay-per-view was worth what it probably cost the Louisiana-Lafayette players' psyches. True, they could see it coming. The first two factors have been known since the game was put on the schedule. But the third factor happened only a week before, and that's what makes me wonder about how the Ragin' Cajuns perceived the passage of time in that week before their annihilation for the sake of NU's quest to get back national championship glory.
I'm guessing the week seemed to pass very slowly to the Ragin' Cajuns. No sane person looks forward to being on the receiving end of such an experience. I would think they'd want it to be over and done with as soon as possible . . . thus making the time before it happened slow to a crawl. Oddly enough, I suspect the Huskers felt the same way. Every day they had to live with the taste of the Virginia Tech loss only increased their desire to replace the bitterness with the sweetness of a huge win. Who cares that the opponent was the proverbial 97-pound weakling?
And that's what is so odd about how human anticipation affects human perception of the passing of time. It's the waiting that's the operative factor, not whether the predicted outcome is dreaded or hoped for. Not to mention that when the event finally happens, it seems to fly by quickly and be either much less painful or much less satisfying than anticipated. Doubtless there is some biochemical explanation for this, but I cannot help but hope that biochemistry isn't the end of it. My experiences tell me that when we die, we're done. We're gone. But my heart hopes my experiences aren't telling me everything.
This year's Chicago Cubs illustrate this most excellently. Last year, the Cubs won 97 games, and took the NL Central title handily. And got swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Dodgers, 0-3. So the front office made personnel changes, and the talking heads on ESPN and MLBTV thereupon agreed that the Cubs once again would be the class of the league. Not all the fans agreed, however. Many of us wish to this day that the Cubs had not acquired Milton Bradley and had kept Mark DeRosa, but why the fans so often seem to know better than management is a topic for another day.
You still have to play the game . . . and when you do play the game, things happen. Unexpected, unanticipated things. Bad things. Third baseman Aramis Ramirez missed something like 50 games with a dislocated shoulder. The Cubs were almost 10 games over .500 when Ramirez got hurt, and went straight into the tank when their leading RBI man was lost to them for almost 1/3 of the season. They were as low as 4th place in mid-summer, though they did manage to claw their way back into a brief tie for the division lead before sinking firmly back to second place by the end of the dog days of August.
Outfielder Milton Bradley, always a prickly personality, did not play anywhere near his potential, or even up to the level he'd played for Texas the year before. His acrimonious relationship with the fans shocked me. Chicago Cubs fans embrace the Cubs like almost no other fans in any sport. They follow the careers of former Cubs and continue to root for them and wish them well (except for maybe when they are actually playing against the Cubs, that is--but Cubs fans still applaud them when they are introduced and when they come to bat).
The one thing Cubs fans hate is the player who isn't giving his best efforts at all times, the player who acts like he doesn't care. To the fans, Bradley did not seem to care or to be giving his all, resulting in his being mildly chided by some. But then Bradley opened his mouth and complained about how awful the fans and the city were treating him . . . and it got so bad that he was suspended and sent home almost a full month before the end of the season. [That he's had similar problems everywhere he's played should lead him to realize something, to wit: it's him, not the fans. He doesn't seem to have that kind of self-awareness, however.--Ed.]
And Mark DeRosa, traded into the American League (to Cleveland) so he wouldn't compete directly against the Cubs, got traded again. To St. Louis. Where he wound up playing directly against the Cubs after all. He is now an important part of the Cardinals' unpredicted rise to the NL Central title, which they clinched last night.
As September proceeded, and the Cardinals' "magic number" to clinch the division title shrank, several strange things happened. The Cubs started playing the way we fans knew they could, and they got back to several games over .500 (as I write this). St. Louis started playing a bit erratically, and lost some games the Cardinals should have won. The Cardinals' "magic number" to clinch hovered at "1" for several days. What that "magic number" means is that any combination of 1 win by the Cardinals OR one loss by the Cubs would make it mathematically impossible, even if the Cubs won all the rest of their remaining games, for the Cubs to wrest the title from the Cardinals.
Seeing a "magic number" hover for days at "1" is something I do not remember ever experiencing before. In my heart of hearts, knowing it was totally silly, I yet began to let a little hope for the impossible take root. Could the Cubs do it? Could they really win all their remaining games? That half of the equation seemed eminently possible. But would the Cardinals in turn lose ALL their remaining games? Not bloody likely. They're too good. And even if the Cards did, there'd still have to be a one-game playoff for the division title.
But as the Cards proved last night in coming from behind to beat the Colorado Rockies 6-3 and thus clinch the NL Central crown, they were in fact too good to let the title slip away. No matter that the Cubs earlier yesterday had beaten the San Francisco Giants.
Still, it kept the NL Central division race interesting a lot later into September than I'd have predicted (had anyone asked) back in August. What does all this has to do with time passing? Once again it comes back to anticipation. The hoped for, no matter how unlikely, can make our perception of the speed of time's passing slow down. In this case, unlike the case of the Huskers football team, however, it was not because of a rush to get beyond a prior insult or injury, but because of how good it felt to have a germ of hope springing to life inside.
What's even odder is that now that that hope has died, its death doesn't seem to hurt as much as its lack of existence at all, back in August, pained me. I wonder how the Cubs players themselves feel about the events of September, 2009. I suspect that they'd given up on any realistic chance to win the NL Central back around Labor Day, which is about when they started playing better again. For even though this year's team is not responsible for the Cubs' lack of a World Series title for more than 100 years, that century must weigh on them. They know their fans have come to expect a winner, and they [except for Milton Bradley, that is--Ed.] want to be that winner. This desire doubtless is reinforced every time the litany of all the close calls and missed opportunities ever since 1984 is replayed.
What the Cubs need to do as a team is learn a little Zen. They must embrace the burden by letting it go. To focus and concentrate on the big goal while not thinking about it during each at bat and each defensive play. To play to their capabilities without forcing them, without feeling obligated to carry around those 100-plus years of expectations. They have to feel the pressure, but not feel it; they must channel it to enhance their moment-to-moment performance, not let it swamp and thus overwhelm their thinking. I know from my own participation in various organized sports that this is the hardest thing to do and yet it is the only thing that separates champions from also-rans.
And I am taking some comfort in the Cubs' performance these past few weeks. Almost to the second they knew realistic pressure was off, they began playing like the winners they can be. I just hope they can internalize that during the off-season, and come back in 2010 to play the way it says they should "on paper." Just don't let them read it!
While contemplating several news items of interest over the past two weeks, and in between attending multiple doctors' appointments, I have been trying to formulate several questions to which I would like self-styled conservatives to answer. Not in a spirit of combativeness, but in a spirit of honest inquiry.
I'll admit it: I am not alone in being quick to the mark, and making assumptions about other people's goals, motives, and aspirations--it's a normal human analytical shorthand. We all do it. But I am trying hard to gain some understanding here, some genuine understanding. I hope it results in civil, and civic-minded, conversation. Maybe if we all worked a little harder at trying to understand viewpoints that are not normally our own, we could actually begin to resolve some of the most contentious issues of the day. That is all I'm trying to get at with the things I am about to ask. Honest!
I should also note: this post is a work-in-progress. I am going to refine and add detail as time and energy allow. Please revisit it periodically. I'll make a note to myself to add a comment whenever I add to the body, as a way of flagging the additional content I will have included.
Question the first: Why are for-profit companies presumed to be better at almost everything than is government? Government must be good at some things, or else there'd be no reason for it to exist at all. For-profit companies exist to benefit their owners--that, by definition, is the meaning of "for-profit." While they provide goods and services that people want and need, they do not exist for the good of those people. They exist to make profit--to take in more than they give out--again, all for the benefit of their owners.
In an ideal world, this trade is a "win-win." People get the goods and services they want and need for a price they are willing to pay; the company gets more in terms of value than it gives, thus fulfilling its "for-profit" status, and also stays in business because it keeps making profit, thus incidentally continuing to provide what people want and need.
This is not an ideal world, however. Too often, people have needs; not just "wants," or "nice-to-haves," but genuine "needs," or "must-haves." [Think "I will literally die without obtaining the benefits of this good or service."--Ed.] Too often, these needs are beyond their means to obtain.
Please note: I am not talking about big houses and fancy cars. I am talking about the things most basic to modern life: food, shelter, physical safety and security, medical care, meaningful work, transportation. Perhaps you disagree, especially about the last two items. However, please consider: we are living in the 21st century, not the 17th. It is literally impossible for everyone on the planet to be 100% self-sustaining. Technology has made it so. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were. People must work to get the money to exchange for the goods and services they cannot provide by themselves for themselves. And in these days, where one works and where one lives are not typically within reasonable walking distance of one another.
Please also note that I am not talking strictly about money. People's time and energy have value, too--value that must be included in any calculations about whether any particular good or service is worth its asking price.
I also included medical care in the "needs," not "wants," category because I know from personal experience that without good health, it is impossible to do the work required to earn the money that will pay for the other goods and services we do not just want, but truly need, just to stay alive.
So to refine my first question, let me ask it this way: why are so many people not just willing, but seemingly eager, to entrust their health care decisions to companies whose very reason for being requires them to take in more money than they pay out--to put it bluntly, to accept your premiums but deny your claims? Health IS life. I've said that before. And since life is the most fundamental of our unalienable rights, and health care literally promotes, preserves, and protects life, isn't running our health care system on a for-profit basis simply wrong? Why not have a not-for-profit system of health care, where decisions are made based on their merits, and there are objective, written standards that can be consulted--and an impartial decision-maker to use those standards to resolve disputes about care . . . instead of an anonymous corporate employee whose own job depends on increasing his employer's profit margins?
I really just don't get it. I would hope someone would explain it to me. But please, not with references to non-existent government "death panels." Private, for-profit insurers are operating those now. [Which leads me to a tangential question to wit: Have you ever noticed how quickly many people who do bad things are to accuse their opponents of doing the same bad things that they, themselves, are already doing? It is an effective way of distracting attention from the real issues.--Ed.]
Hence my question the second: Whence comes this presumption that "government" equals "bad"? I do not deny for a second that government screws things up. All that government consists of is a lot of people, and none of us is perfect. However, I do deny that government is some evil, alien entity that exists to suck the life and freedom out of the people. In this country, the government IS the people. Isn't that still taught in elementary school civics classes? And if not, why not?
Let me point out that the only time government doesn't work is when you put people in charge of the government who say they don't believe in government. After all, they have a vested interest in proving their point. For just one example, contrast the lack of effective response to Hurricane Katrina to, oh, say, the US space program in the sixties. Large parts of New Orleans STILL haven't been rebuilt, 5 years later . . . and yet we went from not even having put one human being into orbit to landing two of them on the moon, and bringing them home safely, in about 8 years. Furthermore, we already have the technology we need to rebuild New Orleans, whereas we had to create everything for the moon shots from scratch.
Also, have you ever wondered why our national infrastructure seems to be falling apart of late? Here's why: between 15 and 20 years ago, the Reagan Administration removed infrastructure maintenance funding from all federal budgets. It made that administration's budget numbers look better, and the price wouldn't have to be paid till decades later, long after its architects [and I use that term loosely--Ed.] have moved on--and we're reaping those rotten fruits now. I keep thinking of the old Fram oil filter commercials--ironically, also dating from the Reagan era. Fram turned the higher retail price of its oil filters into a positive by reminding people that they could spend a bit more up front, to get a Fram filter . . . or they could wait, and have to cover the cost of a total engine rebuild when their less-expensive, and thus presumably lesser-quality, filters did not do the job. As the mechanic in the Fram commercials said, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later." Well, as far as our infrastructure goes, it's now "later." And we can thank the Reagan administration for that.
This is the same reason I do not understand why certain members of Congress claim to be so worried about the expenses associated with certain new legislative proposals, such as health care reform ans switching us over to more environmentally-friendly energy production. YES, it's all expensive. But the longer we wait, the more expensive it's going to become. The only things delay will do are (1) increase the costs to us when we finally have no choice but to change, and (2) keep those costs coming out of the pockets of those least able to afford them, instead of making everyone pay a fair share for the societal benefits that changing now will give us all.
Part of living in a civil, civilized society, is that we ALL have not just rights, but responsibilities to one another. Some people have forgotten this. They are fighting against returning tax code rates even to their levels during the Reagan Administration . . . rates that were (to that point) the most favorable the rich had seen in many decades. I do not understand why so many people who are being hurt financially by these attempts to disable the government go along with them. I've heard some say that to do otherwise would endanger all our precious freedoms, which sounds good--but since when is "freedom" the same thing as "irresponsibility"? You wouldn't be able to make your fortunes without taking advantage of all the things government provides us all--from transportation systems to coinage to physical safety. Everyone who gets the benefits should cover their fair share of the costs. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once pointed out, "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." I really do not get why so many people do not get that, and I wish someone would make a serious attempt to explain it to me.
Question the third: why isn't everyone totally appalled by the dramatic increase in hateful behavior, threats, name-calling, baseless accusations, and--let's face it--racially-biased crap spewing out of the mouths of some people in this country? I am willing to bet that a lot of the people doing and saying the hateful things consider themselves to be good Christians. I would like to understand why they think their expressions of hate do not contradict their religious beliefs. Do they honestly think that Jesus would agree with them? If so, what Bible are they reading? I do not get it, but I'm willing to at least try to understand. I really do hope someone tries to explain these things to me. As long as anyone who disagrees with me is willing to engage in civil discussion, so am I. Please, help me understand "where you're coming from."
Add my voice to those who decry the loss of civic discourse in this country, as evidenced by the behavior of far too many people at the various town hall meetings members of Congress are holding during this August recess. The objections of those who oppose the current proposed health care reforms would have a lot more credibility if their proponents would present them in a calm, rational way . . . as opposed to the shouting, name-calling, blind rejection of facts with which those people disagree, and generally obnoxious behavior we're seeing now. At least the people who attended President Obama's two meetings over this past weekend understood that. People are free to "agree to disagree." That's the entire point of living in a representative democracy. But we can do it with civility and respect, and still acknowledge what we have in common, which is our love of our country and our respect for its fundamental precepts--the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
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On a related note: those who are opposed to health care reform (i.e., everyone who stands to rake in less outrageous fortunes from their roles in the current system) have recognized the truth of the above observation, and are also making more insidious intrusions into the debate. I heard a report on NPR yesterday morning in which a pollster noted pointedly that President Obama's poll ratings have been going down as this health care "debate" has progressed. The pollster was from what is generally regarded as a "conservative think-tank" (if memory serves). His interpretation of the poll results was that Obama's ratings were falling in direct proportion to the increase in public awareness of the details of the proposed health care reforms.
So far, so good. But then he suggested that the public did not want the allegedly "radical" reforms that are being proposed. That killed his ability to analyze his poll numbers, for me at least. If the president's numbers are, in fact, falling, and it's because the public at large isn't liking what it's hearing about the proposed reforms, it's as likely as not that the public thinks the reforms do not go far enough. The pollster never addressed whether the poll's questions explored that possibility, leading me to think the poll's questions did not. The pollster also cited the level of acrimony at most of the town hall meetings as support for his interpretation. This, even after it has been well-demonstrated and well-documented that the loud and angry contingent disrupting the town hall meetings is (1) being pumped up to fury by lies about and distortions of the issues at hand; (2) full of people bused in from elsewhere, outside of the districts the town hall meetings are intended to serve; and (3) being orchestrated, shepherded, and guided by representatives of the health care interests which are going to make less-obscene profits [note well that that does NOT mean "NO profits"--Ed.] should the proposed reforms actually pass.
But what saddened me the most is that no one at NPR even questioned the veracity or accuracy of the pollster's interpretation of his data. We all would have been better off if the pollster had stopped after stating what the poll results said, period. His interpretation should not have been allowed to stand unquestioned. Letting them so stand gave them a level of credibility they did not deserve.
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Then again, as I am reminded on a daily basis, my approach to things like this is not the norm. I am 100% incapable of living my life by the standard of "don't confuse me with the facts, for I've already made up my mind." But far, far too many people in this world cling to what they want to believe, what they prefer to believe, what they need to believe--as opposed to looking at things as they are and summoning up the flexibility to deal with reality.
Better the devil you know, I guess. What never ceases to amaze me about this is how frequently this behavior results in people acting against their own best interests. Disabled people without health care protesting the proposed health care reforms? Workers losing their benefits and even their jobs opposing unions? People whose families suffered generations of discrimination discriminating in turn against others? Residents of dying small towns rejecting financial reforms that would bring some measure of prosperity back to them?
On one level, it's incomprehensible to me. On another, I understand it perfectly well. It starts at home, and it's just as likely to come from the desire to justify one's own bad behavior toward others as anything else. That may seem ironic, given that behavior rooted in preserving one's perceived personal advantage manifests on the larger scale as support for things that run counter to one's own best interests . . . but the root in the same: the inability to cope with change, the fear of somehow losing a sense of control--even when that sense of control is itself an illusion.
Better the devil you know, indeed.
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Speaking of discrimination . . . my aunt recently sent me a diatribe from Patrick Buchanan about how blacks should be grateful that their ancestors were taken from their homes in Africa by force and enslaved for generations--and that even after slavery was ended and they were granted equal legal status under law [a status more honored in the violation than in the keeping, over the subsequent century--Ed.] and thus allowed to partake of the benefit of being Americans. Buchanan's ultimate point was that the lack of black gratitude is the root of all race-relations problems in this country.
I nearly puked. What a vile piece of racist crap! Consider: what value is held in higher regard by "Americans" of Buchanan's ilk than all others? Freedom. They don't like government; they don't like taxes; they don't like motorcycle helmet laws; in short, they don't like being told what to do. [They seem to have forgotten that in a society, we all implicitly contract to give up getting 100% of our own way 100% of the time for the greater benefits of living in a society, a community, which provides shared benefits AND burdens--Ed.] And yet blacks should be "grateful" that their ancestors forcibly had their freedom ripped away from them? That for centuries they were treated like property, not like human beings? That even after their legal status was made right, their factual status in society was still as beggars at the table of America's rich bounty? That they were relegated to slums, to crappy schools, and to vile jobs because they were not given the equal economic opportunity to partake of that bounty in the first place?
Puh-leeze.
What's worse, Buchanan, as a son of Irish immigrants, should be well aware of the history of discrimination against the Irish in this country. No, the Irish were never enslaved. Slavery was infinitely worse than anything they experienced. But that doesn't mean the white male Protestant power structure welcomed them. Even in job advertisements, "NINA" was noted clearly. "NINA." "No Irish Need Apply." If you look at political cartoons from the mid-19th century, the Irish were depicted just as savagely as were blacks--drunken, irresponsible brawlers, with monkey-like faces and childish [as opposed to "child-like"--Ed.] attitudes. The only discernible difference was in the color of their skin.
But Buchanan has assimilated himself into that same white male Protestant power structure. He was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon, for heaven's sake. Either he loathes himself and his background or he has sold it out for the sake of his own place close to the top of the power structure in America. Like Bill O'Reilly, he spouts the far right-wing GOP party line. They are both an embarrassment to people of Irish Catholic ancestry everywhere.
What's funnier (in a sick sort of way) is that they have so ingratiated themselves to the system that oppressed their ancestors, they have become oppressors themselves. "If I made it, anyone can make it. People who fail in America have no one to blame but themselves." Note that they have conveniently forgotten that they "made it" by becoming part of the traditional power structure, not by broadening that power structure to accept anyone not just like those already there. Reminds me of what has truthfully been said about George W. Bush: he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
Which is why we are seeing such hate-fulled backlash against the president in certain quarters. They don't recognize that the "American pie" is big enough to feed everyone, and feed everyone quite well. They perceive only that their piece of the pie--or their tenuous connection to the present power structure--is going to shrink, and they think they are going to lose. When South Africa ended apartheid, similar fears were unleashed. The white minority, which had always held power, feared that giving any power to the black majority would result in their being treated as poorly as they had treated the blacks. By and large, however, such reprisals have not happened.
Nor will they happen [except in isolated incidents--I'm not saying anyone is perfect--Ed.] here. Nor am I singing "Kum-by-ah." There will always be threats and dangers in the world. But they are external, not internal. Just because the center of the power structure has shifted doesn't mean that "the haves" will suddenly become "the have-nots." We are ALL Americans, and the sooner we realize that, the better. For all of us.
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Several religious [I use the term advisedly--Ed.] "leaders" of late have encouraged their flocks to bring their guns to church. No, not to turn them in, but to show support for the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and the individual's alleged right to bear arms at any time in any place. The GOP managed to attach an amendment allowing people to carry loaded guns in our national parks to a bill imposing long-needed and long-overdue restrictions on the excesses of credit card companies--a bill that President Obama signed. The larger goal was, on balance, more important than the loaded weapons provision. [The national parks amendment did include language prohibiting the carrying of such weapons where state laws prohibited it, however. I am a bit perplexed by this, but I gather that the concept of "states' rights" trumps even the "right to bear arms" in the eyes of those who wrote the amendment. But that weirdness is most properly a topic for another post.--Ed.]
Am I the only person in America who thinks this obnoxious insistence on carrying loaded guns is infantile? Some babies carry blankies; some suck on their pacifiers; some suck on their thumbs; some must have their weapons everywhere they go. Their guns are nothing but metal binkies.
In some ways, this juvenile--and loud--insistence on having their guns with them at all times is no different from the far-right Muslim insistence that women wear the burqa. It says a lot more about them and their lack of ability to control themselves than it does about what's going on in the world around them.
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Still, this blind, unreasoning, stomp-your-feet insistence on having your "guns today, guns tomorrow, guns forever" is going to produce a whopper of an unintended consequence if the rich in this country keep getting richer at the expense of the disappearing economic middle class. Stable, successful societies have stable, large, and relatively prosperous economic middle classes. When that balance is upset, and there is a mountain-sized group of the poor at the bottom and a mole-sized group of the über-rich at the top, there will eventually be violence. The Second Amendment fanatics sense this; that's why they insist on having their guns with them at all times and their gated communities to which they can retreat.
But if Second Amendment rights are absolute and inviolable, the poor are going to have plenty of guns of their own, too. And that's what the gun nuts have forgotten. I am mind-boggled by this, because it's plain as the news in the daily paper that where guns are not just allowed, but encouraged, murder rates go up. Omaha passed a concealed-carry law a couple of years ago; the murder rates subsequently have skyrocketed. So far, the majority of the violence has been in the poorer parts of town [self-inflicted wounds, if you will--Ed.], but the hopeless rage that unremitting poverty can engender is going to spill all over the "nicer" areas of town at some point. As much as I want to live forever, just to see how everything turns out, I do not want to see this. I hope I am dead and long gone before it happens, because that's an end for America I simply do not want to see.
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On a lighter note: Have you seen the Gas-Ex commercial wherein the HR manager is reviewing an applicant's resume? He has certain bodily function problems on his mind, and at one point, he hears her saying, "You're flatulent in three languages." I roar with laughter every time I hear that. I wonder if it's because my ex-husband fancies himself to be a linguist . . .
Question the First: When someone is testifying under oath, the attorney doing the questioning normally tells that witness to let the attorney know if s/he doesn't understand a question, so that the attorney can rephrase it. So what happens later when it's clear to everyone in the room except the witness that the witness is so utterly clueless about the meaning of the question the attorney just asked that the witness doesn't even realize s/he doesn't get it--and thus is incapable of recognizing the need to ask that the question be rephrased?
Question the Second: What is it about ESPN's "This is Sportscenter" ads and the St. Louis Cardinals? The single funniest "This is Sportscenter" ad of all time is the one wherein Mark McGwire beats the crap out of a computer (with a baseball bat, of course) after ESPN's Y2K test goes very, very wrong. But the one airing now, featuring Albert Pujols, is a close second. Two Sportscenter anchors are teasing Albert about being "The Machine" while Albert is making photocopies. As seen from Albert's perspective, his mechanical brain is evaluating what they are saying and deciding NOT to eliminate them while he verbally is denying being a machine. After the anchors leave the room, the photocopier asks Albert why he didn't eliminate them, and Albert tells the photocopier to shut up. Hilarious!
It's been a slow week. Either that, or I am so out-of-sorts from watching the current crop of local and national political shenanigans that I want to avoid serious subjects. At least for a while.
A lot of literary critics like to skewer Shakespeare's character Polonius, but some of the advice Polonius dished out in Hamlet was good. How can you NOT be true to your "own self"? You are who you are. I suppose you can try to deny your "own self," an endeavor normally doomed to failure, as I realized last night while watching Nebraska Public Television.
I saw part of the American Masters installment about Willa Cather. I was struck by two things: (1) the driving force of her entire life was to get away from Nebraska; (2) she is the quintessential Nebraskan. It is said her desperation to get away was because she did not want to be buried in a farm field . . . yet no other writer limned the experience of rural Nebraska farm life, especially for immigrant families, as well as she did. My Antonia seared my soul when I first read it, and its frequently hopeless and bleak depiction of nineteenth-century life on the Great Plains haunts me to this day. [Yes, I remember the tragic aspects of the book more than the happy ones.--Ed.]
I understand why Cather felt she had to get out or suffocate. And yet, for myself, I also love that fierce attachment to the land that permeates her work, almost despite herself. The irony is that the more Cather tried to escape, the more she revealed her unbreakable connections to the place she grew up.
That got me to thinking about the varieties of experience humans can have. I know many who, like Cather, grew up in one place, got as far away as possible as fast as possible, and who never looked back. I rejoice in their energy, their drive, their curiosity. I mourn for their rejection of what made them. For, also like Cather, the harder they try to get away, the more they reveal the childhood-shaped aspects of their character.
There are also some who stay close to the place they were born for their entire lives. I rejoice in their serenity. I mourn their insularity. They are happy; they are safe; they are mostly incapable of coping with the larger world.
There are those who grew up as vagabonds (all military "brats," myself included, fall into this category) and who have been unable to settle ever since. I rejoice in their breadth of experience. I mourn their lack of stability.
There are those who grew up as vagabonds but who found a home later in life and settled there (my own exact circumstances). I rejoice again in their breadth of experience, for surely that knowledge imparts wisdom. [If you let it, that is.--Ed.] I also rejoice that they have found a home, a place to be grounded. However, I mourn their shrinking horizons, especially when financial or health difficulties contribute to those limitations.
Happiest must be those who can balance their needs for both a real home and mind-expanding travel. I rejoice in their good fortune for finding the best of all possible worlds. [Candide, are you listening?--Ed.]
I confess that I do not at all miss having to move, despite its several benefits: it makes one clean out one's possessions on a regular basis; it, by giving long-term exposure to different parts of the world, offers deeper understanding of those whose attitudes differ from one's own; likewise, it offers a greater appreciation of and desire for preserving diversity in the world.
Luckily, travel offers the same benefits without the many headaches of an actual move. You get the same experiences, even if not quite to the same depth. And you don't have to pack and unpack all your worldly goods every other year. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in Ozymandius, noted the egotist's perceived benefits of travel: "I am a part of all I have met." That line always struck me as more than arrogant. In my own case, "all I have met is a part of me." Thank goodness for the Internet, which lets me continue to travel, even if only in virtual space and time.
No matter what one's experiences have been, the trick in any life is to find balance. The values learned as a child can shape the interpretation of later experiences, but they should not be allowed to negate or overwhelm those experiences. For instance, if your family was intolerant of other religions, your experiences can teach you that such intolerance is wrong--as long as you are open to the lessons experiences offer. Yes, new experiences can teach you a great deal. If you constantly crave new experiences (mostly because you feel your childhood was totally drab and awful), on the other hand, you are not grounded. ADHD is no way to live a life.
As with diet, as with exercise, as with every other aspect of life, moderation in all things seems to be the most effective approach. No matter how anyone tries to trick it out or glam it up, the oldest, simplest advice is the best. Moderation and balance. However, the best balance is not struck by parking square in the middle of everything. Sometimes that's just not possible. So it is OK to compensate for a lack of physical health with an excessive sense of humor. It is OK to compensate for a lack of material wealth with an excess of, say, library usage. Mental travel on the cheap is far superior to no travel at all.
But never, ever try to run away from or deny who you are. You can change and improve who you are, but your roots are your roots. Acknowledging them will at once ground you and give you the knowledge to rise above their limitations. Only in trying to deny them do you risk losing your real self. Why else do you think the standard advice to writers (like Cather) is to "write what you know"?
Three rules for dealing with one's attitudes about any particular actor: (1) never idolize; (2) never idealize; (3) never mistake an actor's attitudes for those of the characters s/he portrays.
I was dismayed to read in Sunday's Parade that Mary Tyler Moore watches Fox News, likes Bill O'Reilly, and would have campaigned for John McCain had she been asked.
I am mystified as to how someone who built a career on playing smart, forward-thinking, independent-minded women could be so effective in such roles when her own beliefs are the antithesis to everything she has portrayed on the small screen in terms of both Laura Petrie and Mary Richards.
She must be an even better actress than I recognized. Or her attitudes have grown more conservative over time. Or she just doesn't think deeply about the contradictions between the implications of her stated political beliefs and the characters she so vividly inhabited in the 60s and 70s. Or all of the above. Or something completely different.
Help me out here! I feel I am truly floundering. The one thing I do know is that it's silly of me to expect everyone to behave rationally--history teaches us that most people do not--yet I cannot help but wish [and thus tend to expect--Ed.] they would.
I am therefore fighting my own internal demons: I want the world to be understandable, categorizable, orderly . . . yet I love the process of discovery, the messiness of reality, and the challenge of making sense of the non-sensible and nonsensical. It all comes down once again to my compulsion to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Entropy increases despite my efforts to make orderly interpretation of events and people. Yet without order, structure, some rational way to consider the world, there is no way to function within it. The chaos would drown out everything else.
Yes, I am about to address the saga of Nadya Suleman, already a single mother of 6 who just gave birth to 8 more via in vitro fertilization. The initial news reports said the mother of octuplets wanted her rest and privacy, yet suddenly she's all over the media. She says she's never even considered her [obvious--Ed.] resemblance to Angelina Jolie, but within hours, the news is full of stories of the several emails she's sent to the actress. [She's also obviously had a lot of plastic surgery done to increase the resemblance, but until she learns how to sit up straight instead of hunched over in a pile, she'll never even begin to fake carrying it off.--Ed]
She claims to be able to support all her 14 children on her own, but is getting disability payments for 3 of the older ones, and Medicaid is taking care of the expenses engendered by the 8 preemies in the NICU, which according to news reports are over $2,300 per day. She says the same man is the biological father of all 14 but that by her choice, he's no longer in her life in any meaningful way . . . but later news reports suggested he bolted upon learning she was going to have 8 more on top of the 6 she already had. Some reports also suggested that there was more than one father involved.
She says that only one doctor did all the procedures to give her all 14 of her children, but reporters discovered that the doctor who helped her with the first 6 refused to help her have any more. [I am also very glad to know that the doctor who did do the in vitro that resulted in the octuplets is being investigated by medical authorities. I don't know of a single ethical doctor who'd do such a thing for an unwed, unemployed mother of 6. I bet the doctor who did is hoping to jump on the publicity gravy train, too. What has been reported about him to date is rather unsavory.--Ed.]
Her own mother called her decision to have the octuplets "unconscionable," though she's doing what she can to help.
What offends and scares me most about the entire mess, however, is how Nadya talks about her children. She says she will be there for them, will love them and will hug them. This is not how a mother talks about her children. This is how a child talks about her pets.
It stinks, especially for the children. She can't even keep their names straight as it is. The ultimate effect of her sick need to be the ultimate mother is that none of her children are going to grow up feeling loved and secure. They're going to feel as though they've all been lost in the crowd.
Oh, Happy Day! Our too long national nightmare is--finally--over! Barack Obama is about an hour away from taking the oath of office and becoming the 44th President of the United States. For the first time in eight years, I think the light at the end of the tunnel may not be an on-coming train after all.
And shame on me for not immersing myself in inauguration coverage, but I don't want to burn out or suffer overload. Sometimes the most momentous occasions are best experienced in quiet reflection. The image I'm taking away from all the festivities so far is that of Obama standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivering his pre-inaugural remarks in the same place Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his "I Have A Dream" speech. "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" indeed.
I don't know if it was the perfection of symbolism, the television lighting, the time of day, or the HD signal, but the image was breathtakingly crisp and sharp. I am thankful that such things still move me and still matter to me, for they embody my image of America as the beacon of hope for all the world.
Underneath my analytical exterior, I am a hopeless romanticist. I do not apologize for it, nor am I ashamed of it. It's the core of my being. It is my strength. It tempers the often cruel conclusions to which my analytical bent can lead me.
On the other hand, it can make me giddy, and that's why I am glad I have my analytical abilities, too. Balance matters. This day for me symbolizes the return of balance to our public order. I am positively giddy about that!
As I perused the headlines this morning, one in particular caught my eye. What it said was "Palin Returns To Alaska." What I saw was "Pain Returns To Alaska." [Talk about your "things that make you go hmm . . ."--Ed.] I was particularly struck by the multiple interpretations my misreading indicated. (1) Now Alaskans are going to be stuck listening to her whiny earnestness again, causing them pain. (2) Pain is leaving the lower 48, thank goodness! (3) But Alaska's entire ecology is now more at risk, which is actually painful to all of us who care about such things.
Yes, I think Sarah Palin is a pain. But I'm not upset with her because she doesn't know much. [I am acutely aware of my own shortcomings all along the frontiers of knowledge.--Ed.] I AM upset with her comfort with her ignorance. She seems to be content to wallow in her ignorance--indeed, she even takes pride in it. I guess that's part of her identifying with the "more patriotic" parts of America? In any event, it is a totally undesirable trait in a leader.
I don't know how many times I must iterate this, but here I go again: the world is not going to shoehorn itself into some semblance of what "America" thinks of it. It is what it is. If we deal with our incorrect picture of the world instead of its reality, we're going to get more of the same results that such disastrous policies have brought us for the past 8 years.
I for one do not want anyone in or close to the seat of federal executive power to be someone with whom I'd "like to have a beer." I want someone up there who is smart enough to figure out what's really going on and to do what's best for America in the face of the realities of the world, not some pre-conceived notion of what the world ought to be. [Not that sitting down with the Prez and sharing conversation over a drink would be bad, but it cannot and should not be one's primary criterion for casting one's vote.--Ed.]
New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristoff touched on this today in his op-ed piece "Obama and the War on Brains." I wholeheartedly agree with everything he said about the need for intelligence in high places and about how Obama by his mere presence in the Oval Office will do a lot to encourage Americans to think that it's OK to have a brain AND to use it. It's positively Kennedyesque, and it's been too long in coming.
I must quibble with one of his side thoughts, however. He suggests that Obama in the White House may well put an end to the American love affair with ignorance. I beg to differ. "Know-Nothingism" has a long and well-entrenched history in this country. Indeed, our forebears, in coming here in the first place, self-selected for it. Most of them came to get away from the rigid class (intellectual, economic, social) stratifications of the "Old World." Once here, they used the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as insulators. Not only had they escaped the stultified "Old World," their distance from it meant they were protected from it and could, indeed, ignore it.
When practiced to excess, this sense of insularity becomes "Know Nothingism." It's the downside of the notion that all it takes to be an American is to come to America and agree to American ideals. It's a nice way of saying, "Don't confuse me with the facts. I've made up my mind." It's appalling. But it still thrives in this country. McCain lost his campaign for President by counting on it, but if the local and state-wide Nebraska returns are any indication, it's still a "down-ticket" winner.
Nonetheless, Kristoff is right--real intellectuals are no elite--they are the best example of what being a true American is. But as long as the twin infections of our history of "Know Nothingism" and Nixon's "politics of resentment" infect large parts of this country, nothing will improve. It's impossible to get our educational system to focus on teaching our children HOW to think when all the parents care about is teaching them WHAT to think. It's impossible for us to be the world leader in science and technology when we insist that our schools NOT teach Darwin and DO teach Creationism. It's impossible to get our kids to be willing to learn when all the social pressures from their peers AND their parents tells them "being smart means you are an unpopular geek."
So here's one time I hope I have called it wrong and Kristoff has called it right. Is the mere presence of Barack Obama in the White House enough to help us rid ourselves of the influence of perky-but-empty-headed cheerleaders like Sarah Palin? If it isn't, we're all in deep doo-doo.
Election Day is finally here--and it looks as if, for the first time in a LONG time, turnout will be high. Hooray for America! My personal political choices are clear. Above and beyond anything else, however, whether people agree with me or not, I want them to participate. For whom you vote is not as important to me as it is that you vote.
[Of course I'm presuming you've paid attention and are casting an intelligent vote, but that still doesn't mean you must agree with me on the issues. Agree with me only that paying attention and casting your ballot are what matters. That's all I ask.--Ed.]
It seems appropriate, somehow, that today is also Walter Cronkite's ninety-second birthday. Happy Birthday, Most Trusted Newscaster In America! Many, many happy returns! Mr. Cronkite is the embodiment of responsible journalism. In all the years he anchored the CBS Evening News, no one who did not know him personally had any idea what his personal political proclivities were. After he stepped down [was it 1981? Has it really been a generation? Tempus Fugit.--Ed.], I for one was delighted to learn that his personal politics were more "liberal" than I has suspected. Even if that were not true, I'd still say he is a totally "class act," and deserves our collective approbation. Just don't put 92 candles on the cake, or there will be a fire hazard!
On a more personal (and sadder) note, today is also the 6th anniversary of the day I had to have my beloved calico cat Gewürzchen euthanized. She had a malignant tumor in her jaw that grew from nothing to the size of a golf ball in 10 days . . . she was in a lot of pain, and the vet told me even surgery would not guarantee a cure. She'd never be able to eat solid food again, and there was no way to know whether the tumor would return. I know I did the right thing, but I still miss her. She was a sweet if skittish kitty. I hope she is resting in peace and comfort.
If the other shoe drops on your head while you're alone in the forest so that no one can hear you scream, are you still in agony? Oh, yeah.
I cannot believe the Dodgers swept the Cubs in the NLDS. The only explanation I have for it is that despite everything Lou Pinella did to keep the Cubs from feeling the weight of 100 years of Cubs fans' expectations, the Cubs carried that load. There's on other rational reason that Gold Glove-caliber infielders made 4 total errors in Game 2. There's no other rational reason that one of the best power hitting line-ups in the major leagues scored a measly 6 runs in 3 games. There's no other rational reason the pitching staff on the winningest team in the National League this year gave up 20 runs in 3 games.
Either that, or Manny Ramirez is Samson in reverse--the more he trimmed his hair after he got traded to Los Angeles, the more the Dodgers won.
I'd be crying in my beer if I had any.
Somewhere the sun is shining; somewhere children play and shout, But there is no joy in Wrigleyville--the Cubbies have struck out. Again.
"Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." This is not to insult teachers, or pigs . . . or anyone. It is to say there's no point in pursuing a futile activity. Truer words were never spoken.
A woman I consider a friend recently told me "I'd vote for Mickey Mouse if he were on the Republican ticket." That's tantamount to admitting that she cares not for the facts--she's going to shoe-horn them into her preconceived notions of what's right and proper. [Or should I have said Right?--Ed.] It is no different from saying "Don't confuse me with the facts; I've made up my mind." She is intelligent, so her attitude shocked me. I thereupon undertook the fool's mission of trying to get her to open her mind a bit. Her only response has been to accuse me of being just as shallow, but from the opposite end of the American political spectrum. {Which is much narrower than the world's political spectrum, but that's a topic for another day.--Ed]
That's a problem, because I've related to her numerous specific incidents that show it's not true. I've never voted a totally straight ticket in my life; I doubt I ever will. No one political party has a monopoly on all the good people and ideas in this world. In 2000, I thought John McCain would be quite acceptable as the GOP presidential candidate. Barack Obama was not my first, nor even my second, favorite among this year's potential Democratic Party nominees.
But as I have watched the two men campaign this summer, and now especially after the events of the past 2 weeks, I just don't think McCain is up to the job. I won't recount all the outrages I've previously described. I'll just add a few of the most recent. McCain said he'd fire the Chairman of the SEC, when the President has no such authority; he called the president of the SEC the president of the Federal Elections Commission; he said the "fundamentals of the American economy are sound" at the very moment the stock market was dropping over 500 points. He then came up with the lame excuse that he was talking about American workers. No dictionary or thesaurus in the world says "workers" is a synonym for "fundamentals."
McCain attacked Obama because one of Obama's fundraisers was linked in the past to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Yet McCain's own campaign chief of staff was taking $15,000 a month till last month to lobby on Freddie Mac's and Fannie Mae's behalf. McCain claimed that his campaign chief of staff had cut ties to his lobbying business in 2006, but he's still listed as that business's treasurer and is a member of that business's board of directors. Talk about a pot calling a kettle black! [I shouldn't complain, I suppose. It is more evidence in support of my contention, expressed in previous my previous posts, that McCain's tactic is to run against himself by accusing Obama of all the things he, McCain, has done wrong.--Ed]
After Barack Obama called McCain this morning to suggest they issue a joint statement to address the economic crisis, McCain unilaterally announced he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington until the crisis was solved, and that he wanted to postpone the debate already scheduled with Obama for tomorrow night (on the campus of Ole Miss). Yet McCain's TV ads attacking Obama are still running nationwide, his campaign offices are still open (many staffers of which didn't even know about McCain's "suspension"), and McCain's web site is still accepting donations. First, what about this constitutes "suspending the campaign"? Second, Obama has correctly observed that now is the very time the American people need to hear as much from the candidates as possible on this issue, and he also noted (again, correctly) that the president has to be able to do more than one thing at once. America's enemies are not going to stand in line and wait their turn while the president deals with the crisis du jour.
McCain is careening all over the place with no rhyme or reason. It's "shoot first an ask questions later." It's a fighter jock mentality, which figures, since McCain was in fact a Navy fighter jock. My mother, who spent the better part of her 40+ years in civil service working at SAC (now STRATCOM) headquarters, in the Plans and the Personnel sections (the two busiest places in wartime), in wars from Vietnam through Iraq, says fighter jocks make the worst bosses--they refuse to acknowledge that they could not do what they do without the support of the rest of the military and civilian teams who handle everything from arranging their pay to gassing their jets. Their perception of reality isn't, for lack of a better term, realistic.
She also says that after those 40+ years of 12-hour days, she knows at 71 that she'd not be up to handling the job of the presidency . . . and she further knows that (1) her job was not nearly as demanding as the presidency would be, and (2) that she never suffered the physical deprivations McCain suffered while a POW in Vietnam. She thus has legitimate reasons, based on facts and her experience, to question whether McCain is physically up to being president, given what being president entails.
Based on the things I've seen this summer, I doubt it.
But my acquaintance thinks I'm just a liberal who's blind to "facts" with which I disagree. I'm scratching my head here. I'm quite sure that if she and I were to sit down and go down a list of "The Issues" one by one, I'd predict her stand on each of them correctly more often than she'd pick mine. For just two examples, I am way out of step with most "liberals" on things like illegal immigration and making English the official language of the USA. I base my positions on what I experienced while living overseas, both in Europe and in Asia, and on my understanding of American history--which, I am not ashamed to admit, seems to be better than most Americans'.
I think things through first, and only THEN make my choices. Why she refuses to recognize that, I do not know. [I can guess that it has something to do with the implication that forcing the facts to fit one's preconceptions is not merely lazy and shallow--it's wrong-headed and unwise. If I am just like her, my opinions are no better or worse than hers. But I cannot say for sure that that's her reason.--Ed.] It was driving me crazy that I couldn't seem to make that clear to her . . . until I remembered my Twain. I hereby give up my attempt to encourage her to see a wider world.
Oh, well. She probably thinks my quoting Twain was meant as an insult. It was not. If I'd wanted to insult her, I'd have quoted Dorothy Parker: when asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence, Ms. Parker thought for a moment, then said, "You can lead a horticulture, but you cannot make her think."
On September 11, 2001, I was sitting at my computer, checking my emails and contributing to a blog that no longer exists, when I got a phone call from my mother. She was at work at Offutt AFB, doing her civilian job in the STRATCOM personnel office, when the world seemingly stopped--at her behest, I turned on my TV just in time to see the second plane crash into the second World Trade Center tower.
Every generation has its own "I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when ______________ happened" moments. But it seems to me that my generation has had more than our fair share. John F. Kennedy's assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Challenger explosion, the terror attacks of September 11 . . . "and the beat goes on." Or, "we didn't start the fire."
Or "the road goes ever on." As worn down by my own personal tragedies as I have been at times, I never seriously wanted to die [I think.--Ed.]--the historian in me can't stand the idea of not knowing how everything will turn out. Or maybe it's the cat in me. Lord knows, I have more than enough curiosity for any three people.
Maybe I won't have long to wait. According to the Mayan calendar, the world will end on December 12, 2012. It's not worth worrying about, because there's nothing we can do about it, but there may be something behind the Mayans' prediction. On that date, a rare astronomical event will happen. Our Sun, the Earth, and the center of our Milky Way galaxy will be in perfect alignment . . . and now that we know that a massive black hole sits at the center of the galaxy, we can surmise that something drastic may indeed happen at the moment of perfect alignment.
Then again, before Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, some scientists feared doing so would set the Earth's entire atmosphere on fire. More recently, doom-sayers predicted that running the new neutron collider in Europe would create a mini-black hole that would destroy us all. Since I am still sitting here, typing, I can state with certainty that THAT didn't happen.
My mom is worried that my health will continue to worsen and that I'll start to let go. I keep telling her that no matter how bad my health gets, I'm not going anywhere: (1) I have too much to do--as long as I have even one unfinished craft project, I'm hanging in [and I have probably thousands of unfinished craft projects--Ed.]; (2) I have to find out how everything turns out [it's a rare occasion when I read a novel without peeking at the last few pages first--Ed.] ; (3) living is the best revenge. My ex-husband early this year expressed his wish that I'd die . . . and my response was that if I had to do it on will-power and one nerve, I was going to outlive him, just because of the crappy way he'd treated me when and after he abandoned our marriage. He got my Irish up. He has no one to blame but himself. [I suspect that if he had not abandoned our marriage, I would have died by 1998, just as the doctors who diagnosed my lung disease prognosed in 1988. I'd been telling myself by the time my ex left in 1993 that what was good in him was good enough, but he was draining me emotionally. I see now that I am in every way except financially much better off without his emotional poison in my life.--Ed.]
It's odd, the effects that the momentous events of the age can have on our small, individual lives. After 9/11, many people lashed out against Islam, Arabs, and anyone else they perceived to be "coddling" terrorists. It was sort of a collective wounded animal syndrome. Even people who tried to help got wounded by their indiscriminate anger.
Some of us looked inward and reexamined why we believe what we believe, and asked--and answered--the question of how we may best go about defending and preserving our beliefs. The one thing I know is that the moment we lower our tactics to the level of the terrorists', the terrorists have won. For they have made us abandon our most treasured beliefs, as embodied in our Constitution. That certainty is at the heart of my disgust with what the Dubya administration has done in the past 7 years; it is the core of my fear about what will happen to the country should McCain win the presidency in November.
Nevertheless, I'm hanging around. I'm sticking it out. I need to know for my own satisfaction that the good guys can still win. In the real world of late, it's all too often that the good guys get stomped by those who are willing to say or do anything to win--including accusing their opponents of having the overwhelming ambition that their own behavior reveals. Like lying under oath. Like ignoring the Constitution because it just "gets in the way." Like claiming to be an agent of "change" while voting 90% of the time just as Dubya wants.
Aha! Another lesson learned from Star Trek: in the episode entitled "Mirror, Mirror," a pacifist race called the Halkons is willing to die to the last man rather than to raise arms and fight, just "to preserve what we are." The Halkons knew that their integrity, once cast aside, could not be reclaimed. I daresay, if any of them survived their impending slaughter, they'd reclaim their moral high ground and continue to act in accordance with their beliefs.
Those of us who don't want to see Dubya's Third Term are no different from surviving Halkons. Our integrity is intact; if we win in November, we can bring that back to "official" America and restore the Founders' dreams. The only people who've lost their integrity are those who implemented all the illegal and unconstitutional doings of the past seven years. Their integrity is gone for all time.
There is a lot riding on the next few months. I feel the same way about this that I feel about certain baseball teams who shall continue to remain unnamed lest I unleash yet another jinx: I am full of hope, but part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nonetheless, I'm not going anywhere. If for no other reason, should I not be able to take my craft projects with me, I'm not going to go.
In Omaha earlier this week, the Nebraska Humane Society raided the home of a 68-year-old woman because of a tip from a Council Bluffs, Iowa (just across the Missouri river, still part of the larger metro Omaha area) pet store. The woman had been caught trying to shoplift cat food. The NHS found over 100 cats in the woman's home.
I am not going to reveal her name, even though it's been in all the news stories, because she doesn't need more publicity directed at her personally. She has sought out the media (print and TV) and taken an active role in claiming she's "not one of those [weird] old ladies" who hoards cats. She merely helps and protects cats.
The NHS would disagree. While NHS workers admitted that the woman's home was not as bad as some they've had to raid [they didn't need to don HazMat gear--Ed.], even three days after they removed all the cats, cleaned what they could, and left the house's windows open, the house still smells of urine and illness.
The NHS also has had to euthanize over 60 of the cats already. NHS workers also say they found several dead kittens under the woman's bed and some dead cats buried in her back yard.
The woman disputes all these things. She says the only reason her house wasn't as clean as normal the day of the raid is that her normal 4-5 hour routine of cleaning all the litter boxes was not completed because she had to leave for a medical appointment. She says there was only 1 dead kitten under her bed, and no cats buried in the yard.
It's perfectly obvious that she is, in fact, one of those "old ladies" who hoards cats. Delusion about the good she's is doing is the hallmark symptom of an animal hoarder. My heart aches for her, because she is trying to do a good thing--but she doesn't know when or how to stop or set limits, and has allowed her need for being a care-giver to overwhelm her sense about how much care she can responsibly give.
The reason this matters? Well, Socrates said an unexamined life was not worth living, and the lady's story made me wonder how much and in what areas we all delude ourselves, and what harm we are doing as a result, even when [especially when--Ed.] we think we are doing good.
I am mulling over my answers about myself. I hope you will do the same for yourselves. Taking time to reflect--and then act on what we discover--gives us all the opportunity to improve ourselves and make our world a better place.
If nothing else, it should provoke us to donate to our local Humane Societies.
