Great nations and empires die for many different reasons, but one of the most consistent is poor distribution of wealth. Whether we are talking about the monarchy in France or the Ancient Roman Republic, a stratified state is unstable and will end in blood. Not to sound like a purveyor of doom, but the Roman upper 1% owned 16% of the wealth while the US wealthy currently own almost twice that. When Rome was invaded by barbarians, the plebes either joined them or folded due to lack of resources. Why fight to maintain an empire that you have no stake in?
This is a new problem for the United States, mostly because of space. Thomas Jefferson believed that everyone, even the very poor, should own land. In his time, if life wasn't working out for you, you went west. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of our country and the government cleared the way of natives making it safe for settlers. Homestead laws promoted ownership. Wealth was redistributed easily because land was plentiful and the population was relatively small. We had a low demand of land and high supply so prices were low.
Unless we develop warp drive or a new continent bursts out of the ocean, the era of homesteading is over and has been for a while. We have had many fixes to this problem. The New Deal introduced many programs to help those devastated by the Great Depression. We have had the GI Bill, student loans, minimum wage laws and even entrepreneurs like Henry Ford who thought his workers should be able to afford the product they made. Whenever President Obama tries to do something about our currently trends of the rich-getting-richer/poor-getting-poorer, which is alarming, the whack job right wing (aka the Republican Party) calls him a socialist or that he is declaring class warfare.
How bad is it? Not as bad as it seems. The big probably we have is one of perception. We keep comparing ourselves to 1950's. Most of the industrialized world was recovering from World War II. Europe, Japan and the other industrial powers in the world were bombed to shreds, while the US remained relatively unscathed. This allowed for a thriving middle class. It also allowed for high taxation. Both German and Japan had recovered by the mid-1960's and are once again economic powerhouses along with India, Brazil, China, Mexico and South Africa. The US has a lot of competition. The middle class is disappearing but it was mostly an anomaly of history so we need to stop whining about it and accept it. We were raised under unusual circumstances. If we want to maintain the middle class, which is something that I embrace because I am a member, we need come up with new ideas. You could see the middle class as a great progressive movement in history, but it could just be a momentary blip and nothing more.
The problems of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer has been with us for a long time. Thomas Jefferson, when he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, made some moves that if Fox "News" were around would have flipped. He fought for the elimination of primogeniture. If you have read any British literature or watched Downton Abbey, you know primogeniture as the process by which wealth is transferred to the eldest son. When all of one's wealth was transferred to one person, this concentrated the wealth into the hands of the few. It was changed to what we have now where we transfer wealth to all of one's children. This was eventually adopted on a federal level. Thomas Paine, probably the most radical of US founding fathers, believed that primogeniture was responsible for the moral corruptness of the aristocracy because the young aristocrat began their adulthood by stomping on their siblings. Paine wanted an estate to be distributed to all 21 year old citizens (not just the family) equally. Interesting idea. The current Republican party wants to eliminate the estate tax completely. You really need to shrug when people cling to the founding fathers as conservatives. Some of them were, like Alexander Hamilton, but they certainly are no monolith. Their ideas were as diverse of our current batch of leaders, they just knew the art of compromise.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Saturday, February 21, 2015
The Literature of Passing
One of my favorite short novels is the book Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen, a Harlem Renaissance writer. Her two short novels, Quicksand and Passing are usually sold together in one volume as Quicksand and Passing. Both books are excellent and worth reading, but Passing is one of those books that my interpretation completely changed after I talked to a friend. The book is about a two black girls (Clare and Irene) who are good friends. One of them, Clare, has extremely light skin hence can pass as a white person. Because of this, they go different ways. Clare marries a white man and lives among his world. Most of the book is about the relationship of the two women when they meet up again as adults. The "passing" in the title meant racially passing to me as I read through the book, but this friend pointed out that Clare was also passing as a gay woman pretending to be straight. This blew my mind. She pointed out passages in the book where there are erotic undertone to how Clare describes Irene and how Irene has a sexless marriage. I've always wanted to reread the book. It is so short, I am not sure why I haven't.
I have been thinking about this lately because I recently read an article in Salon about a professor, Carlyle V. Thompson, at Medger Evers College in Brooklyn that is proposing that Gatsby (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby) is a light skin black man passing in the white world. This is the first time I have heard this and it is intriguing. This book came out just a few years after Larsen's and it is possible that Fitzgerald did recognize the hypocrisies in our nation's racial politics and coded it therein. The textual evidence is light, with Gatsby hair being "close-cropped" and he owned 40 acres and a mansion (as opposed to 40 acres and a mule). The best case for this is that Gatsby's past is unknown and mysterious. No one knows anything about him. He changed his name from Gatz to Gatsby and claims that his family is all dead. The only overt reference to race in the book is when Tom Buchanan (Gatsby's rival for Daisy), a Nordic with a body with "enormous power" and "two shining arrogant eyes," starts talking about the black race taking over the world. Tom says "next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white." This is pre-Hitler set in an era when eugenics was discussed casually. Miscegenation was still controversial. The only person that seems uncomfortable with Tom is our narrator, Nick Carraway.
If anyone is passing in The Great Gatsby, it is Nick. His family's discomfort for his isn't only because he is single. It is possible that he is a gay man passing in a straight world. He tells us of his experience with the "feminine" male photographer Mr. McKee that "I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands." Indeed. We are then given an ellipsis ridden paragraph and four hours missing from the plot line. This is about as homo-erotic as we get in any novel of the sexually repressed Jazz Age.
I am not sure how relevant it is whether Gatsby is black or Nick is gay. It just throws more depth in an already masterful tiny book that I can be reread many times without catching everything. Should I give it a fourth read? I'm sure I will get around to it, eventually. Fitzgerald lived in Paris for a short time hitting the jazz clubs with Zelda and Hemingway. His exposure to other ways of life was undoubted rich. I have no doubt it had an effect on him.
I have been thinking about this lately because I recently read an article in Salon about a professor, Carlyle V. Thompson, at Medger Evers College in Brooklyn that is proposing that Gatsby (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby) is a light skin black man passing in the white world. This is the first time I have heard this and it is intriguing. This book came out just a few years after Larsen's and it is possible that Fitzgerald did recognize the hypocrisies in our nation's racial politics and coded it therein. The textual evidence is light, with Gatsby hair being "close-cropped" and he owned 40 acres and a mansion (as opposed to 40 acres and a mule). The best case for this is that Gatsby's past is unknown and mysterious. No one knows anything about him. He changed his name from Gatz to Gatsby and claims that his family is all dead. The only overt reference to race in the book is when Tom Buchanan (Gatsby's rival for Daisy), a Nordic with a body with "enormous power" and "two shining arrogant eyes," starts talking about the black race taking over the world. Tom says "next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white." This is pre-Hitler set in an era when eugenics was discussed casually. Miscegenation was still controversial. The only person that seems uncomfortable with Tom is our narrator, Nick Carraway.
If anyone is passing in The Great Gatsby, it is Nick. His family's discomfort for his isn't only because he is single. It is possible that he is a gay man passing in a straight world. He tells us of his experience with the "feminine" male photographer Mr. McKee that "I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands." Indeed. We are then given an ellipsis ridden paragraph and four hours missing from the plot line. This is about as homo-erotic as we get in any novel of the sexually repressed Jazz Age.
I am not sure how relevant it is whether Gatsby is black or Nick is gay. It just throws more depth in an already masterful tiny book that I can be reread many times without catching everything. Should I give it a fourth read? I'm sure I will get around to it, eventually. Fitzgerald lived in Paris for a short time hitting the jazz clubs with Zelda and Hemingway. His exposure to other ways of life was undoubted rich. I have no doubt it had an effect on him.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
What Happened To Dr. Crusher?
It has been awhile since I blogged about Star Trek. I like to do so because my blog hit stats go way up. Trekkies can't seem to get enough of reading and writing about the show even though it has been off the air for about ten years now. When the Star Trek: The Next Generation (aka TNG) came out in 1987, on demand viewing did not exist yet. The Internet was still a baby, known by very few people. To catch the week's new episode, you had to be at your television at the time it played which made for more communal viewing. For me, it was 7PM on Saturdays. I was still living at home so I roped my dad into watching it with me. We were a one-tv home. I am not sure if those exist anymore. I could always set the VCR's timer to record the show for me, but that didn't always work. Now, it is a real treat being able to pull out my phone and watch any episode at a moments notice if I want to.
Great television shows were a rarity back then. If TNG came out now, it may not have been such a sensation, but at the time, there wasn't much else worth watching from a sci-fi standpoint. I'd go out on Saturday nights to meet friends and that week's episode would always come up. This is something that we miss now. Most of us don't watch shows at the same time. Water-cooler talk doesn't go into the realm of television much when everyone is binge watching different shows.
The first season of TNG was uneven in quality. The characters were kinda goofy, the music was awful and the writing was all over the place. It was nice to see Star Trek back on television but I wasn't optimistic that it was ever be as good as the original series (aka TOS). At the time I referred to TNG as "Yuppies in Space." The characters looked so handsome and neat without any edge and depth. The feeling was that all our problems in the future are resolved and everyone is going to be boring. The first seasons ended in a low point, during the writer's strike. The last episode of that season, "The Neutral Zone," is one of the worst episodes ever made with two unrelated plot lines that go nowhere. They had pulled some fan fiction from a pile and a few producers carved the episode together. By the end of the first season, I doubted if the show was going to be on the air for long, but the ratings were so high, it was clear it wasn't going away.
The changes they made in the second season may have saved the show. At least it did for me. Many were subtle. Commander Riker grew a beard. He looked a lot older without the baby face. The only female character from the first season to make it into the next season was Deanna Troi, the ship's counselor, who also got a badly needed hair-style change. The ship now had a bar with Whoopi Goldberg as the bartender. Of course, the biggest change was the new chief medical officer, Dr. Pulaski, portrayed by Diana Muldaur, who appeared in two TOS episodes portraying two different characters. Gates McFadden, aka Dr. Beverly Crusher, was fired after the first season.
Many of the characters, particularly the females characters, were poorly developed in the first season. The actresses were not happy about it. Denise Crosby, aka Tasha Yar, didn't make it through the entire first season. It was clear to her that the male characters, Worf and Data, were gaining in popularity and her character was being thrown into the background by the writers. She quit and they killed Yar off in the 23rd episode. Yar was very poorly written, flippant and inconsistent. You wonder if Crosby would have stayed with the show if Yar would have been developed better like the rest of the show. Gates McFadden, who portrayed Dr. Crusher, had the same gripe with the writers. The added stress of the writer's strike didn't help. The working relationship became unmanageable and she was fired.
One of the better things that happened to the show in the second season was the introduction of Dr. Pulaski to replace Dr. Crusher. She was a better actress and her character was better written. Her character was edgy, which was badly needed on this show. All the characters up to this point were just perfect people, particularly the humans. They all got along too well, with little conflict and very few flaws. Then came Dr. Pulaski. She was abrasive and somewhat of a bigot which made her interesting. Her bigotry was a new one for the 24th century. She was uncomfortable around androids. She would refer to Data, the android on the crew, as "it" and she would continually challenge the idea that he was a sentient being. While the rest of the crew was not phased by his sentience and accepted it unquestioningly, she struggled with it. It was this struggle that made her a better character than the rest of the crew, annoying but more realistic. This was the kind of stuff that we expected from Star Trek. McCoy had a problem with Vulcan and this made for good television.
Of course, most people don't agree with me. The fan-base of the show complained and demanded the return of Dr. Crusher. The character hadn't been killed off. She was written out of the show by stating that she was the head of Starfleet Medical so they could easily write her back in. Nothing much was said about the reasons for her return. Her character was still overshadowed by most of the male characters although she did star in some of the episodes, some of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made.
Great television shows were a rarity back then. If TNG came out now, it may not have been such a sensation, but at the time, there wasn't much else worth watching from a sci-fi standpoint. I'd go out on Saturday nights to meet friends and that week's episode would always come up. This is something that we miss now. Most of us don't watch shows at the same time. Water-cooler talk doesn't go into the realm of television much when everyone is binge watching different shows.
The first season of TNG was uneven in quality. The characters were kinda goofy, the music was awful and the writing was all over the place. It was nice to see Star Trek back on television but I wasn't optimistic that it was ever be as good as the original series (aka TOS). At the time I referred to TNG as "Yuppies in Space." The characters looked so handsome and neat without any edge and depth. The feeling was that all our problems in the future are resolved and everyone is going to be boring. The first seasons ended in a low point, during the writer's strike. The last episode of that season, "The Neutral Zone," is one of the worst episodes ever made with two unrelated plot lines that go nowhere. They had pulled some fan fiction from a pile and a few producers carved the episode together. By the end of the first season, I doubted if the show was going to be on the air for long, but the ratings were so high, it was clear it wasn't going away.
The changes they made in the second season may have saved the show. At least it did for me. Many were subtle. Commander Riker grew a beard. He looked a lot older without the baby face. The only female character from the first season to make it into the next season was Deanna Troi, the ship's counselor, who also got a badly needed hair-style change. The ship now had a bar with Whoopi Goldberg as the bartender. Of course, the biggest change was the new chief medical officer, Dr. Pulaski, portrayed by Diana Muldaur, who appeared in two TOS episodes portraying two different characters. Gates McFadden, aka Dr. Beverly Crusher, was fired after the first season.
Many of the characters, particularly the females characters, were poorly developed in the first season. The actresses were not happy about it. Denise Crosby, aka Tasha Yar, didn't make it through the entire first season. It was clear to her that the male characters, Worf and Data, were gaining in popularity and her character was being thrown into the background by the writers. She quit and they killed Yar off in the 23rd episode. Yar was very poorly written, flippant and inconsistent. You wonder if Crosby would have stayed with the show if Yar would have been developed better like the rest of the show. Gates McFadden, who portrayed Dr. Crusher, had the same gripe with the writers. The added stress of the writer's strike didn't help. The working relationship became unmanageable and she was fired.
One of the better things that happened to the show in the second season was the introduction of Dr. Pulaski to replace Dr. Crusher. She was a better actress and her character was better written. Her character was edgy, which was badly needed on this show. All the characters up to this point were just perfect people, particularly the humans. They all got along too well, with little conflict and very few flaws. Then came Dr. Pulaski. She was abrasive and somewhat of a bigot which made her interesting. Her bigotry was a new one for the 24th century. She was uncomfortable around androids. She would refer to Data, the android on the crew, as "it" and she would continually challenge the idea that he was a sentient being. While the rest of the crew was not phased by his sentience and accepted it unquestioningly, she struggled with it. It was this struggle that made her a better character than the rest of the crew, annoying but more realistic. This was the kind of stuff that we expected from Star Trek. McCoy had a problem with Vulcan and this made for good television.
Of course, most people don't agree with me. The fan-base of the show complained and demanded the return of Dr. Crusher. The character hadn't been killed off. She was written out of the show by stating that she was the head of Starfleet Medical so they could easily write her back in. Nothing much was said about the reasons for her return. Her character was still overshadowed by most of the male characters although she did star in some of the episodes, some of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Ambivalent About American Sniper #AmericanSniper
I like World War II movies. It is not only a fascinating time in world history, but I also like having an obvious bad guy. The Nazis are clearly the bad guys in any WW II film. Rooting for The Allies and against The Axis is obvious. War films based in different eras are more problematic and usually contain multitude of questions about US involvement in the conflict. The best example of this is the American involvement in the Vietnam War. The makers of some of my favorite Vietnam War films The Deer Hunter, Platoon, and Apocalypse Now obviously understood this. The "bad" guy is not obvious, it actually could be us. The struggle that goes on in the war also happens within the characters of the films. Are they the "good" guy? Or are they just trying to survive and protect their friends in the madness of war?
I saw American Sniper last night and there is no such nuance in this film which is not the only problem I have with the film, but perhaps the biggest problem I had with it. Even though we are the invading force in Iraq, a sovereign nation that had no connection with the 9/11 attacks and had no weapons of mass-destruction, yet this film presents us with a clear "good" guy vs. "bad" guy mentality. This may work with a movie about comic book heroes or even WW II, but not about a largely contentious war like the most recent war in Iraq. Who exactly is the "bad" guy ... the woman who is throwing a grenade at an invading force or the sniper that guns her down? Chris Kyle, the American Sniper of the film and book, called this woman in the book, his first kill, a "savage." Sorry, but I don't think it is that easy. Reality is much more complex than that and I questioned the sanity and morality of any society that will place Kyle in the lofty caste of hero.
This is not a very good film. However much respect I have for Clint Eastwood as a film maker, I wonder what he saw in this story. The story is simple. Kyle signs up to be a Navy Seal, goes to basic training, does four tours of duty in Iraq as a sniper. He kills a bunch of people, has a little bit of difficulty dealing with readjusting to life in America but does okay a short time later. End of story. Not a lot of growth here and nothing very interesting. Most of the film is Kyle going from situation to situation killing people. Occasionally he has a conversation with one of his cohorts or wife, but nothing too introspective. If you like seeing people killed on film, this is the movie for you. If you like character development and reflection on the world, you might want to skip this one. This is melodrama with all the savages being Iraqi with the Americans doing no wrong. You want to see bullshit melodrama, I suggest Birth of a Nation. At least that film has an excuse for its b.s., it is old and its audience didn't know any better. We should. File this film under right wing propaganda.
I find myself alienated with general society sometimes. This is clearly one of those times. This is the number one film at the box office and was nominated for best picture of the year by the Academy and yet, I was bored. Half way through the film, I could tell it was going nowhere. I considered leaving to go home to watch The Walking Dead again. Even the walking dead have more depth than the characters in this film. Spoiler: when Kyle finally kills the enemy sniper, there were a handful of cheers in the theater (of about 100 people). I felt odd because I wasn't cheering for Kyle. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't cheering for the Iraqi sniper either. I felt apathetic, ambivalence. I just didn't care. I was glad because it meant the film would be done soon. I just got a little bit more pissed off that my tax dollars were spent invading a country rather than repairing bridges, educating the young or helping hurricane victims. I'd consider rooting for the Iraqi sniper because at least he was defending his home but I just didn't care. There are no heroes in this film, just a lot of one dimension characters who think they are heroes and I find this film's popularity to be very scary.
I saw American Sniper last night and there is no such nuance in this film which is not the only problem I have with the film, but perhaps the biggest problem I had with it. Even though we are the invading force in Iraq, a sovereign nation that had no connection with the 9/11 attacks and had no weapons of mass-destruction, yet this film presents us with a clear "good" guy vs. "bad" guy mentality. This may work with a movie about comic book heroes or even WW II, but not about a largely contentious war like the most recent war in Iraq. Who exactly is the "bad" guy ... the woman who is throwing a grenade at an invading force or the sniper that guns her down? Chris Kyle, the American Sniper of the film and book, called this woman in the book, his first kill, a "savage." Sorry, but I don't think it is that easy. Reality is much more complex than that and I questioned the sanity and morality of any society that will place Kyle in the lofty caste of hero.
This is not a very good film. However much respect I have for Clint Eastwood as a film maker, I wonder what he saw in this story. The story is simple. Kyle signs up to be a Navy Seal, goes to basic training, does four tours of duty in Iraq as a sniper. He kills a bunch of people, has a little bit of difficulty dealing with readjusting to life in America but does okay a short time later. End of story. Not a lot of growth here and nothing very interesting. Most of the film is Kyle going from situation to situation killing people. Occasionally he has a conversation with one of his cohorts or wife, but nothing too introspective. If you like seeing people killed on film, this is the movie for you. If you like character development and reflection on the world, you might want to skip this one. This is melodrama with all the savages being Iraqi with the Americans doing no wrong. You want to see bullshit melodrama, I suggest Birth of a Nation. At least that film has an excuse for its b.s., it is old and its audience didn't know any better. We should. File this film under right wing propaganda.
I find myself alienated with general society sometimes. This is clearly one of those times. This is the number one film at the box office and was nominated for best picture of the year by the Academy and yet, I was bored. Half way through the film, I could tell it was going nowhere. I considered leaving to go home to watch The Walking Dead again. Even the walking dead have more depth than the characters in this film. Spoiler: when Kyle finally kills the enemy sniper, there were a handful of cheers in the theater (of about 100 people). I felt odd because I wasn't cheering for Kyle. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't cheering for the Iraqi sniper either. I felt apathetic, ambivalence. I just didn't care. I was glad because it meant the film would be done soon. I just got a little bit more pissed off that my tax dollars were spent invading a country rather than repairing bridges, educating the young or helping hurricane victims. I'd consider rooting for the Iraqi sniper because at least he was defending his home but I just didn't care. There are no heroes in this film, just a lot of one dimension characters who think they are heroes and I find this film's popularity to be very scary.
Friday, January 9, 2015
I Am Charlie, We Are All Charlie #jesuischarlie
In the age of social media, freedom of expression couldn't be more important. We are not only consumers of media anymore but we are the media. In a world where you get shot or put on a hit list, if your cartoon offends a certain group or your novel offense that same group, no one is safe. If you say something in your Facebook status or Twitter that gets the wrong group of people angry, it could be the end for you. Many people respond by being quiet for fear of offending. I think this is the wrong approach. My immediate response makes me want to Photoshop pictures of their prophet doing perverted things with squirrels. I am grateful that I restrain myself mostly.
I know that most of Islamic people are not insane murderers but are just like everyone else ... just trying to figure things out. I am sure if I had Internet access when I was a teenager, lacking self control, I'd be posting whatever came to my mind. Now I am a bit more reserved. I got somewhat depressed on Monday night after watching this week's PBS show Frontline on the National Rifle Association. It kept me awake. I then got up for work, read my news feed over coffee and heard about shootings in France. My frustration and fatigue turned to anger. Someone on Facebook shared an image that really captured what I was feeling:
I don't know who created it and I assume they don't mind me sharing it here because I think it is genius. It is a bullet going through a pencil plus a pencil sharpener equals two pencils. This is how I react to senseless violence. Cartoonists being killed due to their biting satire just makes me want to write ... scream first but then write. I don't want to just write but to be provocative, to offend, to write something that will metaphorically slap them in the face. I want to stand by Charlie Hebdo. I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo until the shooting but now I am enthralled. The shooters want to intimidate us, sure, that worked to a certain extent. They certainly stopped these particular cartoonists from producing any more. But we are hydra-like. You cut off one head, two will grow in its place. Their aversion to satire is only going to produce more. We'll have more security and we'll be a little bit more freaked out, but we won't stop satirizing. Not even close.
The founders of America knew something that is lost on the violent sects of the Muslim faith. Criticism makes you stronger. Freedom of speech is something we take for granted in modern America. The basic idea is that we want all the ideas out there, even ideas that are diametrically opposed to our own. In each criticism, even the unfair ones, there is a kernel of truth. In this maelstrom of competing ideas somewhere is truth. When an organization dogmatically follows an ancient book and follow it literally, growth isn't exactly their forte.
My feelings about religion have been well documented in this blog. I am not going to rehash it only to say it seems that the world would be a better place without it. People have different ideas about the nature of humanity and origins of the universe. This is a wonderful thing, yet something seems to get lost when we institutionalize it. An idea that begins as a thing of beauty is set in immovable stone in the halls of an institution and then it dies from lack of growth. It is from that point the ideas of us and them are formed. The Us is those who embrace the idea and Them is those that don't. When the us is threatened by the them, you often have violence.
Religion has done some good for humanity. Even a staunch atheist like me acknowledges this. In the Dark Ages, before we had any institutions, religion provided structure and a moral code. Now that we have many other institutions that provide what religion used to, do we still need religion? Spiritual beliefs are so personal that most people have their own regardless of what their church what their church has to say about it. Most church goers cite social connection as their biggest reason to be in a church. I get that. I joined a Unitarian Universalist church a few years ago. I loved the community but all that religion was just too much for me. Even with all the loose rules of a liberal theology, the group think was too much for me, but I really miss the fellowship over coffee sometimes. I can't imagine those folks wanting to behead anyone. They'd have to discuss it for a decade and then form some committees, nothing would ever happen.
Perhaps the Muslim religion is too young of a religion. I have been told that Christianity was around the same age that Islam is now when Christianity performed all their violent deeds. So the religion just needs to mature. In an era of nuclear and chemical weapons, I just hope humanity survives their ascent into adulthood. Until then, I intend to support anyone's right to express themselves regardless of how wrong or offensive they are. It is wrong and offensive not to.
I know that most of Islamic people are not insane murderers but are just like everyone else ... just trying to figure things out. I am sure if I had Internet access when I was a teenager, lacking self control, I'd be posting whatever came to my mind. Now I am a bit more reserved. I got somewhat depressed on Monday night after watching this week's PBS show Frontline on the National Rifle Association. It kept me awake. I then got up for work, read my news feed over coffee and heard about shootings in France. My frustration and fatigue turned to anger. Someone on Facebook shared an image that really captured what I was feeling:
I don't know who created it and I assume they don't mind me sharing it here because I think it is genius. It is a bullet going through a pencil plus a pencil sharpener equals two pencils. This is how I react to senseless violence. Cartoonists being killed due to their biting satire just makes me want to write ... scream first but then write. I don't want to just write but to be provocative, to offend, to write something that will metaphorically slap them in the face. I want to stand by Charlie Hebdo. I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo until the shooting but now I am enthralled. The shooters want to intimidate us, sure, that worked to a certain extent. They certainly stopped these particular cartoonists from producing any more. But we are hydra-like. You cut off one head, two will grow in its place. Their aversion to satire is only going to produce more. We'll have more security and we'll be a little bit more freaked out, but we won't stop satirizing. Not even close.
The founders of America knew something that is lost on the violent sects of the Muslim faith. Criticism makes you stronger. Freedom of speech is something we take for granted in modern America. The basic idea is that we want all the ideas out there, even ideas that are diametrically opposed to our own. In each criticism, even the unfair ones, there is a kernel of truth. In this maelstrom of competing ideas somewhere is truth. When an organization dogmatically follows an ancient book and follow it literally, growth isn't exactly their forte.
My feelings about religion have been well documented in this blog. I am not going to rehash it only to say it seems that the world would be a better place without it. People have different ideas about the nature of humanity and origins of the universe. This is a wonderful thing, yet something seems to get lost when we institutionalize it. An idea that begins as a thing of beauty is set in immovable stone in the halls of an institution and then it dies from lack of growth. It is from that point the ideas of us and them are formed. The Us is those who embrace the idea and Them is those that don't. When the us is threatened by the them, you often have violence.
Religion has done some good for humanity. Even a staunch atheist like me acknowledges this. In the Dark Ages, before we had any institutions, religion provided structure and a moral code. Now that we have many other institutions that provide what religion used to, do we still need religion? Spiritual beliefs are so personal that most people have their own regardless of what their church what their church has to say about it. Most church goers cite social connection as their biggest reason to be in a church. I get that. I joined a Unitarian Universalist church a few years ago. I loved the community but all that religion was just too much for me. Even with all the loose rules of a liberal theology, the group think was too much for me, but I really miss the fellowship over coffee sometimes. I can't imagine those folks wanting to behead anyone. They'd have to discuss it for a decade and then form some committees, nothing would ever happen.
Perhaps the Muslim religion is too young of a religion. I have been told that Christianity was around the same age that Islam is now when Christianity performed all their violent deeds. So the religion just needs to mature. In an era of nuclear and chemical weapons, I just hope humanity survives their ascent into adulthood. Until then, I intend to support anyone's right to express themselves regardless of how wrong or offensive they are. It is wrong and offensive not to.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
You Are Not Protecting My Freedom
Do I respect the service of military people? Sure. I respect their service in the military just as much as they respect my service in the private sector. I have been working my ass off for two decades to keep hospitals financially healthy, some of the best hospitals in the world. Do they respect my service? I guess some of them do. Do they respect as much as much as I am expected to respect their military service? I am guessing not. I am guessing most of them don't have an ounce of respect for what I do. So why should I respect their service if they don't respect my service? Here is the line I usually hear in response to this: "They are protecting our freedom." When I ask how are they protecting our freedom ... I never get an answer. Here is what I get .... insults. Just for asking a question. I get called "ignorant," "stupid," "coward" etc. To this I say "yes, I am ignorant." I am ignorant as to how my freedom is being protected by invading Iraq. Explain it to me! So then I usually ask again, "How is it that my freedom is being protected by the military?" It usually gets worse from there.
I can think of only a handful of professions that actually protect my freedom. The big one, obviously, is lawyers, particularly ACLU lawyers. Whenever our freedoms, that are protected in the Bill of Rights, are challenged, the ACLU lawyers comes to their defense. Whether it is Colonel Oliver North's using the 5th Amendment to protect himself or a Jewish prisoner's right, under the first amendments, to have kosher meals. These folks are the heroes of our freedoms. They fight for our freedom.
The only other professions that I can think of that protect my freedom are teachers who help inform our children of their freedoms, social workers who help those in need maintain their freedoms and politicians who actually pass/repeal the laws regarding our rights. I cannot think of how, someone invading Iraq or Afghanistan is protecting my freedom. They might be influencing a lot of people's opinion of the USA, some of them in not so flattering a way.
We all know these people, the actually heroes protecting our freedom. When you ask a lawyer what they do for a living do they start spewing off bullshit about "protecting our freedom"? No, well maybe some lawyers would, but usually not. Yet the military folks all spew off this nonsense about protecting my freedom. Why does this happen?
I just can't grasp how destabilizing the government of Iraq or dropping napalm in Vietnam has helped my freedom at all. I can't even see how they are even connected.
I am not naive, I know every country needs a military, but it has been a long time since the US military has actually been used for Defense. It is more like Offense. Back in the 1940's when we had an Axis trying to take over the world, yes, you could say that those military people, the Allies, were protecting our freedom. But bombing the shit out of Panama City or Libya .... nope, nothing to do with my freedom. It may have a lot to do with Capitalism, politics or power, but nothing to do with protecting my freedom. When I talk to foreigners about the US, they seem to love our freedom ... aka our movies, our bluejeans, our music, our people, but they hate our military. So not only aren't they protecting our freedom, but they may be hurting it. The more people hate the US, the more likely our government will feel justified invading our privacy, torturing people or killing us covertly. I have a feeling that if our military were cut back a tenth of its size now, we'd have a hell of a lot more freedom and less enemies. Oh ya, we'd save a lot tax money too.
So the next time some military yahoo claims they are protecting your freedom ask them them to explain themselves and let me know if you get a good answer. If they believe it to be true, then they should be able to explain themselves. If they can't, then it is bullshit. Until then, I will continue to thanking my lawyer for her protection of my freedom. Vanessa, a beer is coming your way.
I can think of only a handful of professions that actually protect my freedom. The big one, obviously, is lawyers, particularly ACLU lawyers. Whenever our freedoms, that are protected in the Bill of Rights, are challenged, the ACLU lawyers comes to their defense. Whether it is Colonel Oliver North's using the 5th Amendment to protect himself or a Jewish prisoner's right, under the first amendments, to have kosher meals. These folks are the heroes of our freedoms. They fight for our freedom.
The only other professions that I can think of that protect my freedom are teachers who help inform our children of their freedoms, social workers who help those in need maintain their freedoms and politicians who actually pass/repeal the laws regarding our rights. I cannot think of how, someone invading Iraq or Afghanistan is protecting my freedom. They might be influencing a lot of people's opinion of the USA, some of them in not so flattering a way.
We all know these people, the actually heroes protecting our freedom. When you ask a lawyer what they do for a living do they start spewing off bullshit about "protecting our freedom"? No, well maybe some lawyers would, but usually not. Yet the military folks all spew off this nonsense about protecting my freedom. Why does this happen?
I just can't grasp how destabilizing the government of Iraq or dropping napalm in Vietnam has helped my freedom at all. I can't even see how they are even connected.
I am not naive, I know every country needs a military, but it has been a long time since the US military has actually been used for Defense. It is more like Offense. Back in the 1940's when we had an Axis trying to take over the world, yes, you could say that those military people, the Allies, were protecting our freedom. But bombing the shit out of Panama City or Libya .... nope, nothing to do with my freedom. It may have a lot to do with Capitalism, politics or power, but nothing to do with protecting my freedom. When I talk to foreigners about the US, they seem to love our freedom ... aka our movies, our bluejeans, our music, our people, but they hate our military. So not only aren't they protecting our freedom, but they may be hurting it. The more people hate the US, the more likely our government will feel justified invading our privacy, torturing people or killing us covertly. I have a feeling that if our military were cut back a tenth of its size now, we'd have a hell of a lot more freedom and less enemies. Oh ya, we'd save a lot tax money too.
So the next time some military yahoo claims they are protecting your freedom ask them them to explain themselves and let me know if you get a good answer. If they believe it to be true, then they should be able to explain themselves. If they can't, then it is bullshit. Until then, I will continue to thanking my lawyer for her protection of my freedom. Vanessa, a beer is coming your way.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Democrats Are Pussies
I have been blogging for several years now. In these pages I have said any number of awful things about the Republican party. I stand by all of them. They are anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-reason, anti-liberty, anti-peace and anti-democracy. They disgust me. They prey on the stupid and the weak, appealing to the basest of fears, feeding ignorance for their own gain. I am a registered Democrat, but I want to make it clear, I am mainly a Democrat for lack of a better option. I have said it a number of times in the past, "I am not a Democrat, I am anti-Republican." I vote against Republicans - on all levels from local school board to the Presidency.
Democrats are much better than Republicans. I reject the trope that they are all the same. Yes, there are some really stupid and downright disgusting Democrats out there, but overall, there is no comparison. Most Democrats are pro-science, pro-environment and pro-education. I know that you can find an idiot Georgian Democrat on Youtube talking about Guam capsizing but that is not the norm. The problem with the Republicans being so bad is that the Democrats only have to be a little bit better and they will usually get my vote. Republicans will ignore global warming or even claim that it is a myth/conspiracy so when a Democrat merely acknowledges that it is a problem, they have my vote.
Whether you are talking about the economy, the environment, security, health care or education, it is clear that the Democrats are better leaders ... at least in the last few decades. The Republican's current mantra that government doesn't work is only proven when they take office. So why don't Democrats run on their record? Why aren't they better campaigners? Why did everyone of them run from Obama during this year's mid-term election? Obama's record should be enough for them. He passed landmark health care legislation, ended two wars and has a stellar environmental record. This is a lot to run on. I realize that his poll numbers are down, no thanks to other Democrats, who seem to take their cues from the RNC and Fox News rather than their party's leadership. They don't stand with this president like a good team player would. Why? Because they are pussies.
Before I go further, I should explain what I mean by pussy. Someone who doesn't stand up for their convictions when faced with a small amount of resistance is a pussy. Here is a Democrat not being a pussy:
This is ex-Govenor of New York Mario Cuomo defending his stance on the death penalty. You can agree or disagree with him but he clearly has a position and is not being a pussy.
Now here is a Democrat being a pussy:
This is Allison Lundergan Grimes running away from President Obama. Even though she was a delegate for Obama at the 2012 Democratic Convention and clearly voted for him, she doesn't have what it takes even to admit it and tell the voters why she stood with the president. She was running against one of least popular Republicans in the Senate and yet, she could not admit to something that 62 million Americans and 679,000 Kentuckians did in 2012 ... vote for the President. Pathetic! Offense may be a good defense, but defense is never a good offense and running away is no way to win a race.
I am not suggesting that the Democrats would have kept the Senate if they would have stuck by the President, but certainly they would have lost by less or would have kept some seats. The small chance they had to win was drown out by their lack of passion. All they had to do was get enough people excited enough to actually show up. If not for their pussiness and the American voter laziness, we might not be faced with a global warming denying now being in charge of the Senate's Environment committee. I have a couple of words to the Americans who didn't show up to vote this past November: Fuck You!
I am a little tired of hearing about the midterm elections. The Democrats got a whooping for many reasons but mostly because, like Grimes, they were pussies. She isn't the exception this year, she is just an example of how badly they ran their campaigns. The Republican victory keeps getting spinned as a huge victory, but Midterm elections almost always go against the party that holds the presidency, especially in the second term. The Republican party winning this round and taking over the Senate was expected. Every two years, one third of the US Senate goes up for reelection. The batch this year were mostly seats in states that voted for Romney (aka red) two years ago. So the landslide was expected. Is this a biting mandate against Obama? Of course not. Will the Republicans spin it that way? Of course they will. They deserve some credit. The batch of candidates were much less nutty than two years ago. Hooray for the Republicans for being less nutty!
This is the same group of Senators that were elected in 2008 (six years ago) on Obama's coat tails. The voters turned out in droves to vote for him, they just didn't show up for the midterm. This election had the lowest voter turn out in 72 years with only 36.3% of Americans showing up. Back in 1942, in the early days of WW II, the US voters (33.9% showing up to vote) had better reasons for not showing up to vote. In 1942, only four states had on the spot voting for soldiers. We have no such excuse to skip voting. Apathy is not an excuse. But why show up to vote when even the Democrats don't recognize their successes? It is hard to blame the voter when the candidates take them for granted.
Many great and/or popular Presidents didn't do well on their second mid-term election. Grant was crushed in 1874 ... he remains on currency. Some of the Congressmen who were elected in that term were ex-Confederates. Wilson in 1918, FDR 1938 and Reagan 1980 all lost seats for their party. Nixon lost nine House seats in 1970. In 1998 Clinton actually gained a few seats in the House and he was drowning in scandals. Since the direct election of Senators, no second term president has ever gained Senate seats in the mid-term election.
So if you know you are probably going to lose, shouldn't at least go out celebrating your successes? Shouldn't you be playing the long game and lose with composure? Have some balls Democrats! Until then, I am an Independent. Go Bernie!
Democrats are much better than Republicans. I reject the trope that they are all the same. Yes, there are some really stupid and downright disgusting Democrats out there, but overall, there is no comparison. Most Democrats are pro-science, pro-environment and pro-education. I know that you can find an idiot Georgian Democrat on Youtube talking about Guam capsizing but that is not the norm. The problem with the Republicans being so bad is that the Democrats only have to be a little bit better and they will usually get my vote. Republicans will ignore global warming or even claim that it is a myth/conspiracy so when a Democrat merely acknowledges that it is a problem, they have my vote.
Whether you are talking about the economy, the environment, security, health care or education, it is clear that the Democrats are better leaders ... at least in the last few decades. The Republican's current mantra that government doesn't work is only proven when they take office. So why don't Democrats run on their record? Why aren't they better campaigners? Why did everyone of them run from Obama during this year's mid-term election? Obama's record should be enough for them. He passed landmark health care legislation, ended two wars and has a stellar environmental record. This is a lot to run on. I realize that his poll numbers are down, no thanks to other Democrats, who seem to take their cues from the RNC and Fox News rather than their party's leadership. They don't stand with this president like a good team player would. Why? Because they are pussies.
Before I go further, I should explain what I mean by pussy. Someone who doesn't stand up for their convictions when faced with a small amount of resistance is a pussy. Here is a Democrat not being a pussy:
This is ex-Govenor of New York Mario Cuomo defending his stance on the death penalty. You can agree or disagree with him but he clearly has a position and is not being a pussy.
Now here is a Democrat being a pussy:
This is Allison Lundergan Grimes running away from President Obama. Even though she was a delegate for Obama at the 2012 Democratic Convention and clearly voted for him, she doesn't have what it takes even to admit it and tell the voters why she stood with the president. She was running against one of least popular Republicans in the Senate and yet, she could not admit to something that 62 million Americans and 679,000 Kentuckians did in 2012 ... vote for the President. Pathetic! Offense may be a good defense, but defense is never a good offense and running away is no way to win a race.
I am not suggesting that the Democrats would have kept the Senate if they would have stuck by the President, but certainly they would have lost by less or would have kept some seats. The small chance they had to win was drown out by their lack of passion. All they had to do was get enough people excited enough to actually show up. If not for their pussiness and the American voter laziness, we might not be faced with a global warming denying now being in charge of the Senate's Environment committee. I have a couple of words to the Americans who didn't show up to vote this past November: Fuck You!
I am a little tired of hearing about the midterm elections. The Democrats got a whooping for many reasons but mostly because, like Grimes, they were pussies. She isn't the exception this year, she is just an example of how badly they ran their campaigns. The Republican victory keeps getting spinned as a huge victory, but Midterm elections almost always go against the party that holds the presidency, especially in the second term. The Republican party winning this round and taking over the Senate was expected. Every two years, one third of the US Senate goes up for reelection. The batch this year were mostly seats in states that voted for Romney (aka red) two years ago. So the landslide was expected. Is this a biting mandate against Obama? Of course not. Will the Republicans spin it that way? Of course they will. They deserve some credit. The batch of candidates were much less nutty than two years ago. Hooray for the Republicans for being less nutty!
This is the same group of Senators that were elected in 2008 (six years ago) on Obama's coat tails. The voters turned out in droves to vote for him, they just didn't show up for the midterm. This election had the lowest voter turn out in 72 years with only 36.3% of Americans showing up. Back in 1942, in the early days of WW II, the US voters (33.9% showing up to vote) had better reasons for not showing up to vote. In 1942, only four states had on the spot voting for soldiers. We have no such excuse to skip voting. Apathy is not an excuse. But why show up to vote when even the Democrats don't recognize their successes? It is hard to blame the voter when the candidates take them for granted.
Many great and/or popular Presidents didn't do well on their second mid-term election. Grant was crushed in 1874 ... he remains on currency. Some of the Congressmen who were elected in that term were ex-Confederates. Wilson in 1918, FDR 1938 and Reagan 1980 all lost seats for their party. Nixon lost nine House seats in 1970. In 1998 Clinton actually gained a few seats in the House and he was drowning in scandals. Since the direct election of Senators, no second term president has ever gained Senate seats in the mid-term election.
So if you know you are probably going to lose, shouldn't at least go out celebrating your successes? Shouldn't you be playing the long game and lose with composure? Have some balls Democrats! Until then, I am an Independent. Go Bernie!
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