In the last couple of days, it's come to my attention that my last several posts have struck readers as "angry." Now, I'll admit to a history of a fairly hot temper and fairly intense opinions. But lately, I'm anything BUT angry. And I need to tell you about it.
For some time now--several years--I've been becoming more and more aware that things that I have believed simply aren't true. Particularly lately, we see so many examples of what hasn't been true. Just in the last few weeks, we've seen the light of day find that law enforcement seems to have--shall we say--failed to follow up clues as to who was responsible for 9/11 See here.And here. We've heard about what seems to be systematic law-breaking by the supposed "pillars" of society in the Murdoch hacking scandal. Murdoch There's been the evidence that the federal government seems to have 'accidentally' sold a bunch of guns to drug cartels in Mexico in a made for movies tale of intrigue they had oddly named Operation Fast and Furious. (?) Guns We've seen the recent discovery that half a billion dollars of stimulus money was funneled to a company in financial trouble that has now gone bankrupt. Solyndra And there's the documents that show that our government and the Brits seem to have been a little cozy with the Libyan regime of Moammar Gadafy that we're now helping to oust from power, as our beloved intelligence community arranged to have alleged terror suspects "rendered" to Libya for interrogation, with 'assurances' that Libya wouldn't torture these rendered suspects. Wink, wink. Libya Generally, it seems that a lot of stuff we thought was--wasn't.
So, why am I not angry? Well, because it is about to come to an end with no help from me. They have pushed it so far that it can no longer stand--you can tell because the momentum is growing. The scandals and discoveries of malfeasance are just about daily, and accellerating. It's above my pay grade to figure out exactly who's the kings and who's the pawns in their dirty game, but I'm counting on the Universe to sort it out. The jig is up.
And meanwhile, I'm not playing any more. I've discovered that governments are seats of power and influence, and as the old saying goes, power corrupts. I'm not buying any more explanations that this or that malfeasance is accidental or negligent or carried out by 'rogues,' I'm not buying that we have to kill tens of thousands of people with bombs and predator drones, or target whole races of people or countries over something that happened a decade ago, or over something we're afraid might happen. I'm not buying the party line about what caused the financial crisis, or who's to blame for whatever is the scandal of the day. No matter who says it.
So, here's my plan. I'm going to continue to realize that most of what we've been told about our world and the people in it is lies, and that the illusion is about to end. For many people, the illusion is reality, and they're afraid to see the ugly truth. For me, the end of an illusion is a good thing, even if it makes us uncomfortable for awhile. We just have to be brave enough to look, and really see what's been happening in our names--to support this cozy dream we've called our lives. We're standing on the edge of the cliff. And what we get when we jump is freedom.
And so, there's no need to get angry--just get ready.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Follow the Money
I remember our American Government unit in Social Studies class. This was fifth grade, taught by my only male elementary school teacher. Mr. Grimsley looked like a ex-Marine. My dad was a Marine, and there's something about them, you know? Anyway, Mr. G taught about American government in the way that only a military man could, I suppose. Even during the Vietnam era, he spoke about America and the founding fathers and the genius of the Constitution in a way that probably helped to cement a couple of things about me. The first was, I wanted to be a lawyer--to participate in that great system and help the good guys win. As a fat bookish kid with thick glasses, that was probably as close as I could come to envisioning myself as a superhero. The second was, I started from the position that America was "right." We were free, and the people got to run the country. Even though there was lots of strife--about the Vietnam war, and the then-new idea of legal abortion, and "womens' lib,:" and all of that, we were a great nation that stood for something good. Human dignity and strength. Justice. The power of the people to make things better, or at least try something different.
Later, of course, there were things that led me to question just how much that stuff worked in practice. I found out about the riots in LA, about Kent State, about the Japanese internment camps, about the Pinkertons and the labor movement, about the poll taxes and Jim Crow laws, and Dred Scott, and many other examples of times when our democratic republic seemed to fall down on the job a bit in the human dignity and justice departments. But still, I believed.
I stood for the national anthem, and almost always got a tear in my eyes. I registered to vote and did vote--regularly--having always read the advance sample ballot before I went to the polls. I was almost always politically independent, because I never liked a letter behind my name to tell people they thought they knew what I thought about an issue.
And now I'm much older. I've seen a lot more. I've been a grunt, and a lawyer, and a business owner, and a retailer, and a mom and wife. I still think that the idea of America is great. But but in practice, I've got to wonder who's running this place, because it ain't looking much like a reflection of the will of the people. For example, here's a few things that are pretty clear about what the people want to happen.
We Know We Need to Raise Taxes, Especially on the Wealthy
In March, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 81% of those surveyed would support a tax on millionaires that would be used for deficit reduction, and 68% supported eliminating the Bush tax cuts on those who make over $250,000. An April CBS/New York Times poll showed that 72% of people favored raising taxes on the wealthy in order to reduce the deficit. A May Bloomberg poll showed 64% believe it isn’t possible to lower the deficit without raising taxes. In a Pew poll, 67% said more of high earners income should be subject to being taxed for Social Security; 66% support raising taxes on incomes over $250,000; and 62% support closing corporate tax loopholes. In the June 9 ABC News poll 61% of Americans believe higher taxes will be necessary to reduce the deficit.
We Believe We Must Care for Those Who Can't Care for Themselves
A study of 20 years of polls by such polling services as the National Election Studies, The General Social Survey and Gallup showed that more than 2/3 of Americans agree that government must "care for those who can't care for themselves."
We Think Everyone Should Have Healthcare
A 2007 CBS/New York Times Survey found that 64% of Americans believe the government should guarantee health insurance for all. In the same poll, 57% said that providing health insurance for everyone was more important that lowering costs. And, we've agreed that should be the case even when that means paying more in taxes (2003 Pew poll-67%, 2009 CBS/NYT-57%, 2003 Kaiser-72%).
We Don't Want Nukes
An April, 2010 poll shows 54 percent in favor of reducing the number of U.S. nuclear weapons and 49 percent favor the U.S. stopping development or testing new nuclear weapons, versus 47 percent who oppose it.
We Don't Want the Wars
In weekly CNN polling from June, 2006, through January, 2011, a majority disfavored the US war in Iraq. Every week. In fact, the highest percentage who did approve of the Iraq war was an anemic 40% in September, 2006. And neary 6 in 10 people believe in hindsight that the Iraq war was a mistake (August 2011 CBS/NYT--59%; August 2009 Gallup-58%).
And the war in Afghanistan doesn't fare much better. Weekly CNN polling showed majority support from December, 2009 through April, 2010, but since then, the number supporting the war has dropped steadily, with only 35% favoring the war by August, 2011.
We Didn't Want The Big Banks Handled with Kid Gloves
In 2008 and 2009, substantial majorities opposed the plan to hand over nearly a billion dollars to the banks who crashed the world economy. A 2009 CNN poll showed that 61 percent of Americans disapproved of disbursing the so-called TARP funds allotted under President Bush. A CNN/Opinion Research poll in March 2010 showed 53% favored “regulation that would increase federal regulation over banks, Wall Street investors, and other financial institutions.” And a February 2010 Pew poll showed 59% said they wanted “the government to more strictly regulate the way major financial companies do business.”
Gosh, it sounds like we're pretty practical, nice folks. We want to take care of people. We want to pay our bills. We don't want to reward the people who crashed our country into a fiscal wall. We'd like to stop shooting at and blowing up people. Give me hope for America, after all.
But here we are. We have voted for people who should reflect these opinions, at least to a degree. We heard campaign promises from the President about ending the wars, about universal healthcare, about not gutting the social safety net, and about being responsible about paying for our bills with taxes, especially on those who can afford it. We've whipsawed election returns back and forth from Rs to Ds to Ts and back again, and they keep yakking on TV about "what the American People want" but they keep doing something else.
Of course, they point fingers at each other about who is causing the problems, but I for one have watched this happen while both Ds and Rs are in control. We tell them over and over what we want. 2004. 2006. 2008. 2010. And they hear us, because when they are campaigning they spew it back like verbal vomit, saying they are going to do this and that and the other thing. And what happens? The wars continue, through several elections, as Congress changes hands three times, and trillions of dollars get paid to Halliburton and Blackwater/Xe and Raytheon, and Dyncorp and who knows who else. The healthcare bill becomes an enormous giveaway to the private insurance and pharmaceutical companies, while leaving holes in who's covered you could drive a truck through. The TARP funds go to the banks under both Bush and Obama, and the banks make record profits and turn around and give billions of dollars of bonuses to the brain trust that drove our economy off the cliff. And then, we hear that the fiscal sky is falling and so we must cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and Education and Housing funding--we can't spend money to take care of people who can't care for themselves--we spent it all, and then some, on the rich people, the military that we don't want, and the big Wall Street banks.
All this leads me to conclude that our government isn't listening to us. I wonder who it is they are listening to? I always tell my kids--when you want to know how stuff works, follow the money.
Later, of course, there were things that led me to question just how much that stuff worked in practice. I found out about the riots in LA, about Kent State, about the Japanese internment camps, about the Pinkertons and the labor movement, about the poll taxes and Jim Crow laws, and Dred Scott, and many other examples of times when our democratic republic seemed to fall down on the job a bit in the human dignity and justice departments. But still, I believed.
I stood for the national anthem, and almost always got a tear in my eyes. I registered to vote and did vote--regularly--having always read the advance sample ballot before I went to the polls. I was almost always politically independent, because I never liked a letter behind my name to tell people they thought they knew what I thought about an issue.
And now I'm much older. I've seen a lot more. I've been a grunt, and a lawyer, and a business owner, and a retailer, and a mom and wife. I still think that the idea of America is great. But but in practice, I've got to wonder who's running this place, because it ain't looking much like a reflection of the will of the people. For example, here's a few things that are pretty clear about what the people want to happen.
We Know We Need to Raise Taxes, Especially on the Wealthy
In March, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 81% of those surveyed would support a tax on millionaires that would be used for deficit reduction, and 68% supported eliminating the Bush tax cuts on those who make over $250,000. An April CBS/New York Times poll showed that 72% of people favored raising taxes on the wealthy in order to reduce the deficit. A May Bloomberg poll showed 64% believe it isn’t possible to lower the deficit without raising taxes. In a Pew poll, 67% said more of high earners income should be subject to being taxed for Social Security; 66% support raising taxes on incomes over $250,000; and 62% support closing corporate tax loopholes. In the June 9 ABC News poll 61% of Americans believe higher taxes will be necessary to reduce the deficit.
We Believe We Must Care for Those Who Can't Care for Themselves
A study of 20 years of polls by such polling services as the National Election Studies, The General Social Survey and Gallup showed that more than 2/3 of Americans agree that government must "care for those who can't care for themselves."
We Think Everyone Should Have Healthcare
A 2007 CBS/New York Times Survey found that 64% of Americans believe the government should guarantee health insurance for all. In the same poll, 57% said that providing health insurance for everyone was more important that lowering costs. And, we've agreed that should be the case even when that means paying more in taxes (2003 Pew poll-67%, 2009 CBS/NYT-57%, 2003 Kaiser-72%).
We Don't Want Nukes
An April, 2010 poll shows 54 percent in favor of reducing the number of U.S. nuclear weapons and 49 percent favor the U.S. stopping development or testing new nuclear weapons, versus 47 percent who oppose it.
We Don't Want the Wars
In weekly CNN polling from June, 2006, through January, 2011, a majority disfavored the US war in Iraq. Every week. In fact, the highest percentage who did approve of the Iraq war was an anemic 40% in September, 2006. And neary 6 in 10 people believe in hindsight that the Iraq war was a mistake (August 2011 CBS/NYT--59%; August 2009 Gallup-58%).
And the war in Afghanistan doesn't fare much better. Weekly CNN polling showed majority support from December, 2009 through April, 2010, but since then, the number supporting the war has dropped steadily, with only 35% favoring the war by August, 2011.
We Didn't Want The Big Banks Handled with Kid Gloves
In 2008 and 2009, substantial majorities opposed the plan to hand over nearly a billion dollars to the banks who crashed the world economy. A 2009 CNN poll showed that 61 percent of Americans disapproved of disbursing the so-called TARP funds allotted under President Bush. A CNN/Opinion Research poll in March 2010 showed 53% favored “regulation that would increase federal regulation over banks, Wall Street investors, and other financial institutions.” And a February 2010 Pew poll showed 59% said they wanted “the government to more strictly regulate the way major financial companies do business.”
Gosh, it sounds like we're pretty practical, nice folks. We want to take care of people. We want to pay our bills. We don't want to reward the people who crashed our country into a fiscal wall. We'd like to stop shooting at and blowing up people. Give me hope for America, after all.
But here we are. We have voted for people who should reflect these opinions, at least to a degree. We heard campaign promises from the President about ending the wars, about universal healthcare, about not gutting the social safety net, and about being responsible about paying for our bills with taxes, especially on those who can afford it. We've whipsawed election returns back and forth from Rs to Ds to Ts and back again, and they keep yakking on TV about "what the American People want" but they keep doing something else.
Of course, they point fingers at each other about who is causing the problems, but I for one have watched this happen while both Ds and Rs are in control. We tell them over and over what we want. 2004. 2006. 2008. 2010. And they hear us, because when they are campaigning they spew it back like verbal vomit, saying they are going to do this and that and the other thing. And what happens? The wars continue, through several elections, as Congress changes hands three times, and trillions of dollars get paid to Halliburton and Blackwater/Xe and Raytheon, and Dyncorp and who knows who else. The healthcare bill becomes an enormous giveaway to the private insurance and pharmaceutical companies, while leaving holes in who's covered you could drive a truck through. The TARP funds go to the banks under both Bush and Obama, and the banks make record profits and turn around and give billions of dollars of bonuses to the brain trust that drove our economy off the cliff. And then, we hear that the fiscal sky is falling and so we must cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and Education and Housing funding--we can't spend money to take care of people who can't care for themselves--we spent it all, and then some, on the rich people, the military that we don't want, and the big Wall Street banks.
All this leads me to conclude that our government isn't listening to us. I wonder who it is they are listening to? I always tell my kids--when you want to know how stuff works, follow the money.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Family
The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines family, in part, this way:
2 a group of persons of common ancestry; or
3 a group of people united by certain convictions or a common affiliation; or
4 a group of things related by common characteristics.
Any way you cut it, humans are all family. We all live under one roof. It's blue (from this side, anyway), and we do live under one head of household, whatever you call it--God, Fate, Allah, The Universe--no matter which you believe in, we each believe it covers all of us. We share a common ancestry, whether you're an evolution devotee or a creationist, there was at some point a first human. And, as little as it seems like it sometimes, we do share both common affiliation and characteristics--DNA, if nothing else.
Now, the implications of this may vary. Family means a lot of different stuff. For example,there are those people in your family who light up your life and make your day and are the cat's pajamas and all of that. The ones you'd both live for and die for, depending on what's required. They're the easy ones.
Then there's the family like my brother. He's been, for as long as I can remember, a human version of Eeyore. So gloomy he could have caused a bout of depression in Mother Teresa. Incredibly smart man, funny like you see only once or twice in a lifetime, and with a great heart, but truly, he's got a perennial black cloud, precisely his own size, that follows him and rains on any parade that might have the nerve to invade the neighborhood around him. I love him anyway. With family, sometimes you have to learn to accept the weirdness and just opt for love as the only rational way to deal with it.
Finally, there's family like one of my aunts. Her favorite thing in the world was to go to get-togethers and talk to one person long enough to get them to say something bad about one of the other family members and then to run, not walk, to that person and let 'slip' some incomplete aspect of the slander, usually in some manner that sounded like it might be a complement, or an offhanded comment, but it had fire in it. She always seemed like a pyromaniac with not a jug, but an atomizer, of gasoline and a match. She didn't pour on the accelerant. Just a spritz, enough to start a little whiff of explosiveness, and then she'd slip away. It might take hours, days, weeks or months for the fire to get going, but it usually did. God love her. But she was still family, and as long as there were family get-togethers, she was still there--still part of the scene. With family, at a minimum, you know you're stuck with them.
In the human family, we've got the same levels--from those who are easy to love to those who you know you're just stuck with. But, no matter how different from us we think they are, they are family, and most of them evoke a certain sympathy within me, particularly in times of trouble.
But lately, I've been noticing a disturbing trend of people reacting to the suffering of others in the family with anything from appalling apathy to even smug satisfaction. I'm beginning to wonder what kind of evil we've bred in this 'democratic experiment' we call America.
I recently heard a conversation of two people discussing the famines in the Africa. One of the people said "we" couldn't be sending money over there, because "we're broke." Seriously? We're talking about half a million human beings who will likely die of starvation in the next 6 months. And while I get that we've got budget issues, and unemployment, and dwindling 401(k)s, etc., etc., etc., most of our fat behinds are driving around in cars that cost twenty times the annual income of those people in Africa, parking our still-fat behinds in front of big screen TVs and computers and answering calls and texts on our smart phones while waiting for our supper to ding in the microwave. Heck, many of us pay as much in a month to a health club to get rid of the evidence we eat too damn much as it would cost to feed a family in Africa for a month. Seriously.
We may have problems. We may never again be able to afford too big houses with too much furniture and other crap, financed for us with no money down by the financial gurus to keep us fat, spoiled and happy enough to ignore the inequities of the system that keeps them fatter, more spoiled and happier yet. I, for one, think that's probably not a bad thing. Even if it is a bad thing, to compare our issues with half a million people dying for lack of a bowl of rice and some powdered milk is self absorption made an art form. We owe it to ourselves as humans to believe that humans--any and all humans--deserve a tiny modicum of dignity at least big enough to mean you don't have to sit by helplessly and watch as your children die from lack of food or water or from diseases that a few dollars would prevent or cure, while other people chow on frozen pizza til they're obese, just because of where in the world they happened to be born. I might not like her much, but I wouldn't wish that even on my 'atomizer' aunt.
Good grief people, this ain't no way to treat family.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Us and Them
When I was a kid, one of my sets of aunts and uncles lived in Texas. This particular aunt and uncle had eight children--eight of my many cousins. Much of the rest of my extended family lived in Colorado, and so when we saw the Texas cousins, we had a blast listening to their accents. They said they wanted "Cheee-Toes and a Co-Cola" for Cheetos and a Coke. When we'd tease them about this, they'd say, "well, All-a-y'all talk funny" in their profound drawl, and the lines were drawn. Us. And. Them. Fortunately, this was good-natured line drawing, and we'd set about pointing out to each other the ways we talked funny. Was it "soda" or just "pop?" Did you put "oyl" or "ohl" in your car? And what in the heck was an Aggie?
Coming from a fairly homogenous world of white working-to-middle-class people, this was one of the first times I can remember being in the game of "Us and Them"--a game where you separate people not on how they behaved, but what they were. Unfortunately, it wasn't the last. I learned, for example, that while my parents weren't the cutting eyes out of sheets kind of racists, they had their moments. When I was in eighth grade, I developed a crush on a boy named Jimmy. Eventually, my mother asked his last name. When I told her, she pointed out that I should not put too much stake in the puppy romance, since he had a Spanish surname and therefore must be a "Mexican." Luckily, I guess, Jimmy did not share my interest in a relationship, so it never became a controversy outside my own mind. Another time, a mixed-race couple moved into the neighborhood and the African-American woman was promptly dubbed "N*****-baby" by my mother, a moniker that was not objected to by my father, or anyone but me, for that matter. Still later, my folks erroneously (and angrily) believed that I was having a relationship with an African-American man when I was in college. As much as it annoyed them, I'm actually surprised I didn't date him--but that's another topic. My dad made quite a scene, chasing my car down the street yelling foul things about my taste in men. Playing "Us and Them" is a phenomenon both universal and close to home.
Recently, my family and I went to see the movie The Help, which deals with the violent, overt, and subtle variants of racism in the American South in the 1960s. I'm fairly sure there wouldn't be a lot of people going to see that movie and rooting for the Junior-League-worshipping, separate-toilet-protecting antagonists in the film. We've grown beyond that kind of crude hatred and prejudice, right?
But it did get me thinking about way we play the game of Us and Them today. One of the most obvious at the moment is the great debate about Muslims--a debate in which people actually get on television to ask seriously whether all Muslims shouldn't be treated as terrorists because their religious book supposedly says that non-Muslims are infidels to be converted/conquered/killed.
In the interest of "Security," we are expected to ignore that the question whether all Muslims are terrorists because of what their religious book says or because some of them are makes about as much sense as asking whether all Christians are misogynists because their religious book says to stone to death women who turn up pregnant absent marriage (fornicators), even though they may have been raped, or whether those same Christians are bloodthirsty tyrants because of the Crusades, or whether all Japanese-Americans are dangerous because of Pearl Harbor, or whether all Black men are rapists of White women because some were accused of it in the South in the last century (and maybe some of them actually did it).
When we put it in a little more close to home terms, it seems pretty stupid to put Joe in prison because Bill committed a crime, even if they are both white, Catholic, New York City trash collectors, or to kill Jane because Joan bombed a pizza parlor, even if Jane and Joan both went to the same church where the pastor talked about pizza parlor bombing as a political tool. Somehow, the questions in the game of Us and Them only make sense in the moment, and only when we're on the side asking them.
So maybe instead of asking those questions, we could put our fear on hold and notice that this form of tribalism is primarily adopted when people are scared witless and find it quick and easy to blame someone else for that fear. Maybe we could realize that, most of the time, both the threat alleged and the tie of the "other" group to the threat is either manufactured entirely or is manipulated and enhanced to make the game of "Us and Them" seem more reasonable. We might even go so far as to notice that usually, the manufacturing of fear is done by people who stand to consolidate a good bit of political or economic power if people are scared and at a loss what to do about it. When that happens, people are willing to make lots of deals with lots of devils who claim that if we just let them have this power, or that amount of money, they'll keep us safe from the very fire they are stoking.
On the anniversary of the biggest "Us and Them" inspiring event of my middle-aged life, we would do well to analyze our reactions. We might even spend a bit of time questioning the motives of some of the people who are "commemorating" the event in a fearful "it's not over yet" manner. We could possibly look at the last ten years and recognize that the hijackers on 9/11 killed a few thousand people; our reaction to that day has killed ten times that many, most of whom had nothing to do with the terror plot, has hastened the destruction of the American economy while making rich the mercenary 'consulting' companies who make war for us in the modern era, and has put the concept of a free America on life support in critical condition.
Perhaps we could begin to figure out that we need to start acting like "Us" and "Them" are really the same thing, before they make a movie about how stupid we are.
Coming from a fairly homogenous world of white working-to-middle-class people, this was one of the first times I can remember being in the game of "Us and Them"--a game where you separate people not on how they behaved, but what they were. Unfortunately, it wasn't the last. I learned, for example, that while my parents weren't the cutting eyes out of sheets kind of racists, they had their moments. When I was in eighth grade, I developed a crush on a boy named Jimmy. Eventually, my mother asked his last name. When I told her, she pointed out that I should not put too much stake in the puppy romance, since he had a Spanish surname and therefore must be a "Mexican." Luckily, I guess, Jimmy did not share my interest in a relationship, so it never became a controversy outside my own mind. Another time, a mixed-race couple moved into the neighborhood and the African-American woman was promptly dubbed "N*****-baby" by my mother, a moniker that was not objected to by my father, or anyone but me, for that matter. Still later, my folks erroneously (and angrily) believed that I was having a relationship with an African-American man when I was in college. As much as it annoyed them, I'm actually surprised I didn't date him--but that's another topic. My dad made quite a scene, chasing my car down the street yelling foul things about my taste in men. Playing "Us and Them" is a phenomenon both universal and close to home.
Recently, my family and I went to see the movie The Help, which deals with the violent, overt, and subtle variants of racism in the American South in the 1960s. I'm fairly sure there wouldn't be a lot of people going to see that movie and rooting for the Junior-League-worshipping, separate-toilet-protecting antagonists in the film. We've grown beyond that kind of crude hatred and prejudice, right?
But it did get me thinking about way we play the game of Us and Them today. One of the most obvious at the moment is the great debate about Muslims--a debate in which people actually get on television to ask seriously whether all Muslims shouldn't be treated as terrorists because their religious book supposedly says that non-Muslims are infidels to be converted/conquered/killed.
In the interest of "Security," we are expected to ignore that the question whether all Muslims are terrorists because of what their religious book says or because some of them are makes about as much sense as asking whether all Christians are misogynists because their religious book says to stone to death women who turn up pregnant absent marriage (fornicators), even though they may have been raped, or whether those same Christians are bloodthirsty tyrants because of the Crusades, or whether all Japanese-Americans are dangerous because of Pearl Harbor, or whether all Black men are rapists of White women because some were accused of it in the South in the last century (and maybe some of them actually did it).
When we put it in a little more close to home terms, it seems pretty stupid to put Joe in prison because Bill committed a crime, even if they are both white, Catholic, New York City trash collectors, or to kill Jane because Joan bombed a pizza parlor, even if Jane and Joan both went to the same church where the pastor talked about pizza parlor bombing as a political tool. Somehow, the questions in the game of Us and Them only make sense in the moment, and only when we're on the side asking them.
So maybe instead of asking those questions, we could put our fear on hold and notice that this form of tribalism is primarily adopted when people are scared witless and find it quick and easy to blame someone else for that fear. Maybe we could realize that, most of the time, both the threat alleged and the tie of the "other" group to the threat is either manufactured entirely or is manipulated and enhanced to make the game of "Us and Them" seem more reasonable. We might even go so far as to notice that usually, the manufacturing of fear is done by people who stand to consolidate a good bit of political or economic power if people are scared and at a loss what to do about it. When that happens, people are willing to make lots of deals with lots of devils who claim that if we just let them have this power, or that amount of money, they'll keep us safe from the very fire they are stoking.
On the anniversary of the biggest "Us and Them" inspiring event of my middle-aged life, we would do well to analyze our reactions. We might even spend a bit of time questioning the motives of some of the people who are "commemorating" the event in a fearful "it's not over yet" manner. We could possibly look at the last ten years and recognize that the hijackers on 9/11 killed a few thousand people; our reaction to that day has killed ten times that many, most of whom had nothing to do with the terror plot, has hastened the destruction of the American economy while making rich the mercenary 'consulting' companies who make war for us in the modern era, and has put the concept of a free America on life support in critical condition.
Perhaps we could begin to figure out that we need to start acting like "Us" and "Them" are really the same thing, before they make a movie about how stupid we are.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Back to Eden
In the past several years, I've become increasingly convinced that our food-world has been changing. I've noticed that certain foods have chemical or metallic tastes that I find extremely unpleasant. At first, it was just one or two foods. In the past several months, this phenomenon has extended to numerous foods. In the beginning, no one else in my family could taste these odd tastes, but a couple of weeks ago, my older daughter bit into an apple, wrinkled her nose and said it tasted funny--like medicine. We moved on, and she ate some melon instead. Then last week, my little one, who has the constitution of a billy goat, tasted metal in some grapes. I could taste it too. We're getting to the point where it's hard to find any food (other than the heavily processed varieties that have so much salt and sugar that you can't taste anything else) that tastes edible. Fortunately, we have a couple of gardens that we work, where we can get some food that tastes like food, but like most people, we'd be hard-pressed to grow everything we eat, fruit and veggie wise, and the suburban powers that be would probably take a dim view of our raising chickens or a cow in the backyard.
I've also been becoming aware that our food-delivery system is basically beginning to malnourish us. Commercial agriculture has been yanking ever-faster-growing, ever-higher-yielding, ever-easier-transporting products from the ag system through the creative and constantly increasing use of chemicals and 'technology'--pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones and steroids. Our food is being raised in test-tubes in a solution of chemical goo. And, at the same time, food--even 'good' food--is becoming objectively less good for us, with modern food showing significant declines in the levels of important nutrients like magnesium, zinc, vitamins A, B-6, C and E, iron, potassium and calcium. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss
All this has led me, a confirmed cheapskate of the highest order, to begin to buy organic produce and 'natural' meats, the expense of which is a stretch, but at least we can eat them. I resent paying good money (even less of it) to buy food that I KNOW is at least not good for us, and may be actively bad.
A couple of days ago, I happened upon something that everyone should see. In a full-length film, Back to Eden, a gentleman from California lays out the facts about today's food, the reasons for the place we find ourselves, and a solution--a reasonable way that nearly anyone, gardener or not, can begin to grow some to much of their own food. For those of you put off by the religious backdrop against which this information is presented, please muddle through. It's well worth it. You can view the website and the film at http://backtoedenfilm.com/.
I've also been becoming aware that our food-delivery system is basically beginning to malnourish us. Commercial agriculture has been yanking ever-faster-growing, ever-higher-yielding, ever-easier-transporting products from the ag system through the creative and constantly increasing use of chemicals and 'technology'--pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones and steroids. Our food is being raised in test-tubes in a solution of chemical goo. And, at the same time, food--even 'good' food--is becoming objectively less good for us, with modern food showing significant declines in the levels of important nutrients like magnesium, zinc, vitamins A, B-6, C and E, iron, potassium and calcium. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss
All this has led me, a confirmed cheapskate of the highest order, to begin to buy organic produce and 'natural' meats, the expense of which is a stretch, but at least we can eat them. I resent paying good money (even less of it) to buy food that I KNOW is at least not good for us, and may be actively bad.
A couple of days ago, I happened upon something that everyone should see. In a full-length film, Back to Eden, a gentleman from California lays out the facts about today's food, the reasons for the place we find ourselves, and a solution--a reasonable way that nearly anyone, gardener or not, can begin to grow some to much of their own food. For those of you put off by the religious backdrop against which this information is presented, please muddle through. It's well worth it. You can view the website and the film at http://backtoedenfilm.com/.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Can You Hear Me Now?
I'll bet there's not a single American who hears or reads that line without thinking about the campaign of cell-phone commercials that touts the wonder of the cellular network that allows the nerdy guy to be heard just about everywhere as he walks across our land. Deep, right?
It's occurred to me recently that the advance of 'communications' has spelled not only fun and addictive little games about farming, but the systematic destruction of human relationships. Put your Farmville on pause and allow me to elaborate.
A couple hundred years ago, people communicated primarily by speaking. Many people couldn't read or write, and many more who could do so were prevented from having very many books by their cost and scarcity. So people learned stuff and socialized and passed on information verbally, and the limitations of technology at the time meant that nearly all communication necessarily came with a personal, face-to-face human relationship. People's entertainment and passtimes almost all involved something that entailed other people, right there 'in their grill,' as the kids like to say. From story-telling and apprenticeships to gathering round the piano for a song, activities usually involved other people. And interestingly, when someone is right there, in front of you, it's a lot harder to think of them as anything but a fellow traveller on this Earth journey. If you tell them off, you have to deal with their immediate and probably unpleasant reaction. If you give them a hug, you get a hug back. It's all very human.
But as time has gone on, and technology has gone from verbal transmission to books to telephone and telegraph, to radio, television, cell phones and internet, fewer and fewer communications have a human relationalcomponent. Today, someone could watch TV, listen to music on their Ipod, download a book on their Kindle, send a bunch of text messages, and look at everything from news to medical information, to pornography on the internet, all without ever seeing another human, even in the form of a photograph.
Heck, many of us now have "relationships" with "people" on the internet, and the reason for the quotes is simply that many people who thought they were in a relationship with someone later found out that the 36 year old attractive female who likes to dance in the rain and watch NASCAR is actually a 22 year old, 400 pound male deadbeat who likes pulling people's chains or getting them to give them money for airfare to come and visit.
Basically, our technology has cut us off from the very basic, and very necessary activity of relating to others of our kind. Not only does it make us much more likely to get mean and stupid, since we can now tell someone off or tell them we love them without ANY personal feedback in the form of body language or a punch in the snout, but oddly enough, this very state of affairs has been recognized for a long time as being one of the subtler forms of torture.
It's called solitary confinement. Back in the 1950s, Harry Harlow, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, wanted to use monkeys in studies, but basically couldn't afford to buy monkeys, so he decided to breed his own instead of importing them from India. He didn't know much about raising infant monkeys, so he cared for them like babies of that day—in nurseries, with plenty of food, warm blankets, some toys, and in isolation from other infants to prevent the spread of infection. The monkeys grew up sturdy, disease-free, and larger than those from the wild. Yet they were also profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves. True. You can look it up.
So, in essence, we have spent the last two hundred years introducing, multiplying, spreading and perfecting the methods to just about ensure that people become self destructive, obsessive lunatics. So now, shut off all the electronics. Sit down and have a conversation with someone--face to face. Or, just go back to staring blankly, rocking and circling or mutilating yourself. It's up to you.
It's occurred to me recently that the advance of 'communications' has spelled not only fun and addictive little games about farming, but the systematic destruction of human relationships. Put your Farmville on pause and allow me to elaborate.
A couple hundred years ago, people communicated primarily by speaking. Many people couldn't read or write, and many more who could do so were prevented from having very many books by their cost and scarcity. So people learned stuff and socialized and passed on information verbally, and the limitations of technology at the time meant that nearly all communication necessarily came with a personal, face-to-face human relationship. People's entertainment and passtimes almost all involved something that entailed other people, right there 'in their grill,' as the kids like to say. From story-telling and apprenticeships to gathering round the piano for a song, activities usually involved other people. And interestingly, when someone is right there, in front of you, it's a lot harder to think of them as anything but a fellow traveller on this Earth journey. If you tell them off, you have to deal with their immediate and probably unpleasant reaction. If you give them a hug, you get a hug back. It's all very human.
But as time has gone on, and technology has gone from verbal transmission to books to telephone and telegraph, to radio, television, cell phones and internet, fewer and fewer communications have a human relationalcomponent. Today, someone could watch TV, listen to music on their Ipod, download a book on their Kindle, send a bunch of text messages, and look at everything from news to medical information, to pornography on the internet, all without ever seeing another human, even in the form of a photograph.
Heck, many of us now have "relationships" with "people" on the internet, and the reason for the quotes is simply that many people who thought they were in a relationship with someone later found out that the 36 year old attractive female who likes to dance in the rain and watch NASCAR is actually a 22 year old, 400 pound male deadbeat who likes pulling people's chains or getting them to give them money for airfare to come and visit.
Basically, our technology has cut us off from the very basic, and very necessary activity of relating to others of our kind. Not only does it make us much more likely to get mean and stupid, since we can now tell someone off or tell them we love them without ANY personal feedback in the form of body language or a punch in the snout, but oddly enough, this very state of affairs has been recognized for a long time as being one of the subtler forms of torture.
It's called solitary confinement. Back in the 1950s, Harry Harlow, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, wanted to use monkeys in studies, but basically couldn't afford to buy monkeys, so he decided to breed his own instead of importing them from India. He didn't know much about raising infant monkeys, so he cared for them like babies of that day—in nurseries, with plenty of food, warm blankets, some toys, and in isolation from other infants to prevent the spread of infection. The monkeys grew up sturdy, disease-free, and larger than those from the wild. Yet they were also profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves. True. You can look it up.
So, in essence, we have spent the last two hundred years introducing, multiplying, spreading and perfecting the methods to just about ensure that people become self destructive, obsessive lunatics. So now, shut off all the electronics. Sit down and have a conversation with someone--face to face. Or, just go back to staring blankly, rocking and circling or mutilating yourself. It's up to you.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Heroes
Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.You'd think, reading that today, that it was written last week, last month, or last year. It certainly sounds familiar. What a mess of 'dark realities' we have.
In fact, this quote is from 1933, during the Great Depression--the only time the economic turmoil in America seemed even bigger than it does today. The fear of these realities has cable news and talk radio in a churning frenzy, day after day, month after month. The sky is falling, and the only way to prop it up there is with the ingenious idea of whichever politician or pundit happens to be yakking it up on the magic TV or radio machine at that moment.
And people are so scared that rather than demand real answers and real action, most of us are falling into one of two groups: Group A, in which we bicker and name-call and line up in neat rows along partisan divides, blaming the other guy loudly and with great fervor and suggesting that some program or other that affects someone else is high past ripe for some serious cutting; or Group B, in which we stick the proverbial banana in our ear, our heads in the proverbial sand, and with our intellects numbed by this week's smorgasbord of mindless diversion, proclaim with absolute confidence that it's 'their' problem to solve, and dammit, 'they' better get to it!
Of course, neither group wants any part of taking our own measure of responsibility for our contributions to the problems we face. We don't want to give up the student loan for our kid. We don't want to work a few extra years before retirement. We don't us want our taxes to increase or our knee replacement to cost more. We don't want to drive a car that's smaller or less fancy because it gets great gas mileage. We don't want to recycle everything, even if it's more work, so there'd be less in the landfill. We don't want to eat less frozen pizza and more broccoli because we'd lose weight and be healthier and ease the burden on the healthcare system. Heck, we don't even want to use the high-post-consumer-recycled-content-bath-tissue. It's too scratchy, you know. We're all really quite ready for our ills to be cured by placing them squarely in the 'someone else's problem' field. We are desperately waiting for the heroes.
So, what are we going to do when they give us their solution? When they tell us which job we'll get and how much money we'll have. When they decide who's worthy to be educated and who's not. When they decide which brand of religion to observe because it's the one of our "forefathers" and which ones to attack because they're wrong or dangerous or bloodthirsty. When they tell us whom we have war with to preserve our national illusion. When they tell us what we have to do to get our bread ration or a pair of shoes. What exactly will we go along with because we "have to" to keep our place in this hard and scary world?
Back in 1933, right before that quote at the beginning of this post, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave us one of the most famous lines ever delivered, "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." A more quoted thought has been rarely had. But oddly, hardly anyone knows what the rest of the speech was, and certainly no one in our current political and economic system wants to talk much about it.
The rest of the speech was about what had brought America to the brink of financial ruin. Roosevelt called out the "self-seekers" and the profiteers, and all those who sought to protect their own interests at the expense of others and our common good. He talked about our own money-changers in the temple. He criticized the politicians whose only reason to serve was "pride of place and personal profit." He asked America to generously use the relative "plenty" that we still had, even in hardship, and to not react to that hardship with hard hearts. And he called on everyone to realize that,
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
The people who heard that speech and were inspired by it have come to be called the Greatest Generation--not because 'outsmarted' the downturn with clever investing and kept what they had, and not because they killed neighbors for their canned goods, and not because they found 'efficiencies' in payroll and increased corporate profits by double, but because by and large they came together and sacrificed and helped each other and pulled the world back from the edge.
Dang. Maybe 'they' aren't going to solve our problems. Maybe the heroes we've been waiting for all along are us.
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