A Woman in Not a Kangaroo

I am disgusted and sickened by the expressed views of the religious among us when it comes to women's issues. These are coming mostly from men of a certain age, of course. They continue in the fine tradition of the Red Tent, where women are banished during the days of their "uncleanness" to quote the wonderful folk who bring you the great traditions of never sit in a chair where a woman has sat lest you become contaminated.

I'm talking, of course, of the religions coming out of the Near East, of which Christianity is part whether it wishes (it usually doesn't) to deny its participation. Judaism is an enthusiastic participant in the process of defining its manhood against the backdrop of the horror of what it might have been: having been born a woman. When the Jewish men give their thanks every day in prayer for not having been made a woman, any self-respecting woman ought to shudder.

It's not a huge jump from thanking god for providing a man with an external sex organ to looking down on women with horror and fear--and telling them to cover themselves up since desire for them is shameful and obviously a woman who shows an ankle or face is a temptress who must be stoned to death.

But is this just the Near East?  I think not. Not after listening to the idiocy, paranoia, and plain bigotry of men--always men--who think they deserve to be voted in to represent us.

If it's "true" rape, one of our dimmest bulbs out of the Midwest says--the woman can choose not to get pregnant. Well, kangaroos can--but biology says that women can't. If there is sperm and there is contact, there she blows. He must have gone to the same schools that taught you would go blind if you masturbated. And he thinks he is qualified to pass laws for this nation?  Only a man could believe so--no forgive me, I forget Michelle Bachman.

Then there's the bundle of joy who believes that a child conceived by rape is God's will. So the rapist was doing god's will when he forced himself on a woman who didn't want him? Why on earth, then, are we bothering to try Holmes for murders in the Aurora movie theatre? Wasn't he just doing god's will? Didn't god intend for those victims to die? By having any judicial system at all, aren't we going against god's will since he clearly intended for all this to happen? You can't just pick and choose where god chooses to insert himself--he's either in or he's not (no pun intended).

Plus--what about free will? St. Augustine argued pretty persuasively about this. Human beings have free will. They can choose to do good or do evil. So what about the free will of the rapist? He chose to be evil, but did his victim also have free will to accept his decision? It seems like there may be some free wills more free than others--and you can be sure it is not the woman's.

In my youth, I walked the picket lines for the National Organization of Women to protest the lack of legal abortion. I had friends who needed illegal abortions and they were risky and terrifying. I wanted to save the next generation from the horrors of what we saw. I wanted them to have the economic opportunities that were denied us. I fought the dominant hierarchy (male, of course) by competing and winning--I wanted to make it easier for the young women behind us. We all felt that way. We fought for a cause.

And now I watch in dismay as the next generation of women, lulled perhaps by the concessions we won for them, seem ready to let them erode. They do not realize that we older women were never able to kill the impulses that would limit women in future. It required us to pass the torch to other generations willing to value what we had done and to recognize that arrayed against us were the very fabric of society and the massed force of religious opinion.

To those women voting the conservative ticket, all I can say is as you give up the things we hoped to achieve for you,  I hope you will give some little thought to the women who fought to give you the vote, those who fought to get you decent wages, and those of us who fought for your control over your own body.

A War Between Staff

Like everyone else, I am sick of these elections and just want them over. It's very hard to find something to write about that might be in any way useful to my primary intent: just get this beast over and done with. I have no interest in debating a set of political arguments that have become unmoored from anything approaching reason--I gave up writing about them a couple of months ago. I also have no interest in trying to ask the electorate to ask questions that go beyond the mere confirmation of their own prejudices or even pointing out my disgust with the politicians who find it rewarding to fan and ignorance.

Still, there is something to say. So let me launch into the nature of campaign staffs, which is something about which I have absolute first-hand knowledge.

I was assistant to the president of a major university system. That made me aide-de-camp, trouble-shooter, bottle washer, confidant, and booster all wrapped up into one. Think the staffs of Romney and Obama and you have my role. I was paid well, and I was good at it.  But also think that there was a complete breakdown of any distance between the staff and our employer.

If my boss got a bruise, his staff bled That's how close we got and also how close he wanted it. If he said something stupid, we were on instant damage control. Ditto if he said something honest that was likely to give advantage to his opponent. We staff sat around agonizing over every perceived slight, every opposing point, every slight advantage--they all took on earth-shattering importance and had to be neutralized. We were so deeply involved that sometimes even our boss became like the enemy when he said something stupid. In this, of course, we were not ranged against whatever opponent was on the horizon, but against the that opponent's staff who were doing the same thing.

Our sanity did not really return until we were off the rollercoaster of working for him. But I can say that it gave us perspective in hindsight. So I can say that for someone watching all this, the only counter to this sort of collective lunacy is to look at the bosses directly and not get sidetracked by the staffs.

So, Candidate Romney says he opposes birth control and choice--the staff will go into high alert and issue statements after that fact saying that of course he supports choice and contraception. Except that he doesn't. But no matter, the staff must follow the path of making the candidate electable and countering the opposition. They may not even like and respect him (that comes out in memoirs later on). But in the heat of the moment, and the rush to win, it sometimes becomes a matter of two accounts: what the candidate says and what his staff says as it cleans up the mess.

Hoe do I know this? I've been there. My president used to like making controversial statements. His staff ran around behind him trying to modulate or counter by "interpreting" his comments to create the image of the man we had been hired to promote. Sometimes we did this a bit hollowly since we knew where he stood, but we covered him and ran interference for him sometimes without knowing any alternative.

Don't get me wrong--staffs are wonderful. But when it comes to politics (university or national) my experience is that it is wisest to listen to what the man is actually saying and doing rather than relying on an overworked staff desperately hoping to get the candidate elected. They like their jobs too. .

The US Election: Let's Just Get It Over With

For once I have been speechless. It doesn't happen often, but the US elections have managed it. The attack ads, the lies, the blatant hostility to various groups of people, and the naked self-interest have reduced me to a form of soul-deadened despair. It seems there will never again be common purpose to this country, only the dog-eat-dog selfish survivalism that seems to have gripped our politics.

My complete numbness occurred when Citizen Romney selected as his running mate a man who espouses the "virtues" of Ayn Rand without recognizing that lady's place in time and space. Ms
Rand was in full revolt from communism, having moved to America from eastern Europe. No one then would dispute her opinions and no one now would ever espouse a communist government for this or any other democracy. But we have seen that capitalism has its own form of horror, and no one reasonable espouses a "pure" form of that either. There has to be balance. Balance is precisely what is missing in this country right now.

I look in vain for moderates who recognize the need for delicate balance in human affairs.

Until John McCain selected Sarah Palin, I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was cranky and impulsive, but his record spoke for itself and he seemed a decent man with his heart in the right place. Until Sarah, that is, who most recently has said that Obama needs to have a big stick or grow one in dealing with foreign policy. Classy. All of a sudden, McCain became a crank by association with her.

Likewise with Romney. One could say that he as a moderate caught in the midst of a difficult divide in his party. He had to sound radical, in other words, to keep his party together. Now, he has his own version of Madam Sarah. When he pulled in an Ayn Rander, he also  became a crank by association.

What is so weird about Ayn Rand? After all, isn't she for free trade and the reward of talent?

As one of the people who have actually read her: here is my take.

The central idea in her novel Atlas Shrugged is that if the talented and visionary leaders of industry among us were to go on strike, leave the country in so many words, everything would collapse. Her main character, John Galt, is quite explicit: the value of a human life is the extent to which it is capable of generating profit. This is so opposed to Christian teaching that it's no surprise that Ayn Rand was an atheist, something that conservatives try to ignore.

My take on Ayn Rand is that she is all black and white. If the leaders of industry were to decamp a whole group of people would rise to the challenge and take on the mantle of leadership. That's the way it has always happened: lose a leader and another sees the need and steps forward. The world is not divided into can do and can't. It's much more likely to be divided on the basis of those who are given opportunities and those who are not. I am quite aware that I would not have been given the chance to earn a Ph.D. if there had not been generous state support of higher education--yes, that's a subsidy that the rich among us hate (it was a conservative push to loans rather than grants because they saw higher education as a private benefit rather than a national investment).

Sorry, Ms Rand and your followers. Your leaders of industry are replaceable and not even that useful. Many of them are just into greed and working the government to their own short-term profit. The future of this and any other nation lies with its children. And these are the very ones you don't care about because they don't have immediate commercial value.

The Olympics: Opening Ceremony

After the Beijing Olympics, everyone wondered what the London Olympics would look like. Well now we know: they went literate, cerebral, and humorous. And the response in proudly anti-intellectual America was "huh?" and, even worse, edited heavily in one part by an uncomprehending NBC.

 What many missed was that this show was a century of UK history from the point of view of its people. That’s different from the monarchy, the culture, and the empire. The people are the ones who had to live and endure through the rest of it.

 We saw the idealized village life with sheep, cricket, and dancing--nostalgia that sometimes grips Britain about its lost agrarian past. This gave way to the Industrial age, which literally ripped up the villagers’ sod and drove them into cities. Great technological achievements followed, represented by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (not Abraham Lincoln as some in the US ignorantly guessed) who built railways, bridges, and steamships, the mainstay of Victorian industry.

 Faced with the Dickensian horror of factories that made a handful of barons rich and chained people to repetitive, dirty work, unions and protest movements emerged (including the push for votes for women), many of which were brutally repressed, although that wasn't emphasized nor were the wars that beggared Britain.

 What followed was what NBC chose to cut out. It was a sequence dealing with terrorism, which the US, of all places, should understand. I watched the deleted part on BBC television. It was framed as a tribute to London victims, but it could just as well have been 9/11 or any other bombing for that matter.

 We may like to pretend that our brutal pasts have no place in the celebration of world athletics, but Britain has endured the mayhem for many more years than the US--think IRA, blown-up buses and underground, and dead horses lying in the road. Shame on you, NBC, particularly for substituting a silly interview with US swimmer, Michael Phelps.

Now came the part of British history that the US might like to ignore. After World War II, Britain made the deliberate decision to develop the welfare state. The National Health Service was a major part. The major beneficiary of NHS? None other than the children.

 Inevitably, the show turned to the digital age, a time of noise, bombarding images, instant access to the world, multiculturalism, and people connecting with one another through social media. It was the sort of multi-media confusion that is our daily life. This was my least favorite part--but maybe I am Luddite at heart and just too old to get it anymore.

 Threaded throughout all this was a list of all the things the British Isles have given the world: the greatest writers, children's literature, television shows, music, the world-wide web, and industry among them. British movies provided a pointed reminder of these (not surprising because the director of the show is a movie producer) done with comic relief: a spoof of the (British) James Bond franchise and of (British) Best Picture winner, "Chariots of Fire."

Now if I can get this—why not NBC and the supposed “experts” sent over to report on the games? Hadn’t they done their homework? I guess not. It’s probably just arrogance and ignorance, but the British will see it as just one more example of US unwillingness and inability to give the UK its due.

 Yes--the show was British all right. It was the history, the mood, and the thoughts of a people. NBC commentators need to remember that in the UK, they still think it's OK to be literate. How quaint. How modest. How utterly British.

Colorado's Mass Murder redux

Colorado isn't the only place where heavily armed shooters have fired on unsuspecting people unable to escape, but because of Columbine the State is inescapably linked with it. Undoubtedly, the recent killings of Aurora movie goers will only confirm this association.

If the Aurora attacks follow the usual path, the media will be full of hand wringing over the availability of guns. Letters to the editor about the decline of moral virtue will follow: some will plead with readers not to lose their faith in God. But then, after the victims have been buried and the media moved on, it will be business as usual.

Since I live just down the road from the theater and since I know someone who was there, it seems to me that this might be a useful time to take a different approach to how we react to this kind of senselessness.

Responses to attacks on a community like this take several forms. First, there is what I call noise. This the mindless spouting of the self-serving. It adds nothing to the debate or to our self-understanding.

For example, we have already heard from one legislator who claimed that the massacre occurred because the Judaic-Christian tradition is under attack. Is he serious? Given that tradition's violence and sowing of hatred, it is more likely to be the one doing the attacking. Besides, fundamentalist Christians to the contrary, this is not exclusively a Christian country even if the Puritans tried to make it so.

Then there was the NRA which again  shouted the tired old saw that guns don't kill and that if one person in the theater had been armed, the gun fight could have ended with only the shooter being killed. The completely overlooks the fact that man was wearing full body armor, that one pistol is rather outgunned by an automatic, and that more people might have been killed in a crossfire.

We have yet to hear from the hate radio broadcasters, but they're predictable too. They will try to make political hay out of people's feelings of powerlessness and anger. If they can blame the their political opponents and roil their base, the money will flow from their sponsors. Along this line, there might even be some pastors who will claim that God was punishing a corrupt society because of movies of the type being shown that night.--that one comes straight out of the Medieval church's playbook.

Noise, then, is the hyped up, unexamined, babbling of those who see a way to use what has happened to personal advantage. It is cold and manipulative, seeing people and events merely as fodder for on-going prejudices.

The second response is what I call analytical. It's what the media do in the aftermath of something like this. They pour details down on our heads. They will interview, photograph, and try to create immediacy. "The closest thing to being there," they might say.  In the opinion columns, they will speculate, and they will lecture us on whatever their favorite cause happens to be: America has a shocking lack of services for the mentally ill, they might say.  Or, they may try subtly blaming those people around the killer: Why didn't they notice something was wrong? Why did he slip through the cracks?  They may raise questions but will have no answers for us, only stabs at explanation.

To give it its due, the analytical may be the closest thing we have to something like a congregation of people who want to know why. But while pastors of the congregation might urge faith and belief on the constituents, all the media can do is keep turning up what's known in the hopes that some telling detail will make a difference to someone.

Finally, the third response is the most difficult but also the most valuable. It is what I call the integral, not only because it deals with the nature of what is, but because it tries to do it with integrity as opposed just to ethics. I don't mean here sitting around a campfire singing kumbaya and saying we are all to blame. What I'm describing is the approach of those few individuals who are clear-eyed about what is happening to the country and try put it into the context of self-reflection and moral choice. In other words, people who have the wisdom, authority, position, courage, and earned respect to pose the questions that need to be asked if we are to move forward. Unfortunately, they are few indeed because the voices of noise are so loud and most of those who might lead can't see beyond their own self-interest either.

It seems to me that the most important question we can ask is why we can't look at ourselves and ask how we got in this mess. Why is it that killing people is an acceptable if not expected way for someone deranged to gain release from frustration/depression/failure/alienation (you name it)? and Why is is it equally acceptable if not expected for some other deranged person to defend to the death the right for free access to attack weapons whose only reason for existence is to kill and maim as many people as possible?

Lots of people with larger bully pulpits than I have already called for national conversation about who we are, what we value, and where the country is headed. It's a national discussion we need to have. Are we, for example, willing to live in a fortress so that every individual can do exactly what they want (including buying unlimited guns and ammunition) at any time they so choose? This is a serious question involving the boundaries between the individual and society. It's useless to approach it as gun control--that just sets off the paranoia. As a question of responsibility and boundaries, maybe we can get somewhere. But where is the statesman who can lead this discussion?

As many will hasten to say, this crime could have occurred anywhere. That may be true enough, but let's be honest about it. Someone interested in harming others for the media coverage will find greater satisfaction conducting an attack in an urban setting. For one thing, the cities provide much more chance of cornering people because there are more people to be cornered. However, it's those living in rural areas who are most likely to be strident about guns--should they be dictating national policy when they aren't the ones most likely to be taken out? Is there something inherently unfair in the way our politics is structured? We'll never know because no one takes on the issue.

The founding fathers of this country debated very hotly the topics of what rights human beings had just by the fact of being born. Our issues are different and we need to revisit our Constitution to see what still can serve us. The social compact in the Constitution was meant to be revisited. As one wag aptly asked: Does the right to bear arms mean I can have nuclear weapons?  We can well ask--what is the limit and where is the line to be drawn?

We need the courage to have a national debate on the nature of freedom and liberty. Surely, we can live up to our own founding principles. Either that, or we will answer Abraham Lincoln's question of whether this nation can survive by saying, no, it cannot. We buried it under prejudice, ignorance, and blind tribalism.

All My Baggers Live in Texas?

Like writers everywhere, bloggers write to be read. This means they must have at least a working knowledge of the people for whom they are putting words on paper. What I've found is there is such a disconnect between me and those I assume could be readers that it's removed any desire on my part to take the time and make the effort. Still, as Milton reminds us, one voice stilled in one voice that plays no part in life.

What put me in this reflective mood is an encounter that I had with a fellow customer at Starbucks. I hadn't thought her particularly loopy before. She informed me as I got my coffee that they were considering a move to a place wherewhere she could get away from the partisanship and the yelling going on in the US. For a moment, I thought she was talking about Australia or Canada.

But no, she was talking about moving to Texas, encouraging the state to secede since  it has all the oil and can go it alone, and then getting rid of all illegals and, for good measure, any one with a green card.

Interesting.

My fall back position in such situations is to refer to Shakespeare to calm things down a bit. Mentioning his name usually resets the conversation as most people haven't read much of his work.

"Shakespeare says," I went on, "that you can't remove just a small part of bad things without losing good things as well." She looked at me a bit blankly so I continued. "If you want to catch someone doing ninety in a fifty-mile zone, you have to set the dragnet for everyone. So you'll catch everyone going anywhere over the limit at the same time. Now you can certainly argue that anyone doing any amount of speed over the limit deserves what they get. But are you prepared to give hundred dollar tickets to someone doing one mile over?"

What I didn't say, of course, that a lot depends on the net the police use because the principle is that same: exactly where do you draw the line? But I figured she'd get it.

"Now," I continued, "if you throw everyone out with a green card, you are going to deport families of US citizens who haven't had the required residence time to qualify for citizenship; you'll throw out people who need more time to learn the language; and you'll remove people who are good citizens but don't have the money to apply. It's not free, you know."

Her blank look of certitude turned into one of confusion. In the passion of the ,moment and easy answers, she hadn't considered the gray parts of the issue. From the perplexed look on her face, I could see she was looking to adjust the net she had cast so broadly over anyone with a green card. How could she get rid of the people she didn't like (Latinos) without doing the damage I mentioned.

I left before she found an answer. Perhaps I have given her pause. I hope so, because I was on a green card once and I feel I did a great for this country even before I took citizenship. But did I do any good? Or was I just sounding off?

Those same questions plague me with this blog. Does it do any good? Is anyone's mind open enough to be changed? At this point, I doubt it, and I personally look forward to getting beyond the personal animus that drives mindless yelling and primary certitude.

But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps  it wouldn't be a bad idea for all like minded people to go to Texas.





 

Sandusky and Moral Absolutes

Judging from the comments on the New York Times website and on various internet news sites, the news of Coach Sandusky's conviction on child molestation charges has raised cheers. I can't find one comment that defends the man. Even Penn State students and their families have remained remarkably quiet after the ruckus regarding Joe Paterno's firing. One family member said they "had moved on" long ago on Happy Valley. An acid reply on that comment was merely, "I imagine you would want to."

Despite Happy Valley's desire to put the matter behind them, it's not going anywhere soon. That's because this case represents one of the very few--if not the only--moral absolutes we have left. What I mean by "moral absolute" is something that we all know and agree to be morally repugnant. Pedophilia and various sexual offenses are about all we have left we can agree on.

In ages past, there was a list of things that everyone agreed, more or less, were "wrong" or at least socially undesirable. Murder, adultery, and theft were among these. But they hardly look like absolutes anymore.

Nowadays, the commandment not to kill comes with a set of asterisks. In some states, killing is legally allowable if you feel threatened. Similarly, adultery is no longer an absolute, merely the source of tabloid interest: how much is the divorce going to cost? Stealing, as in ponzi schemes and corporate manipulations, seems to be codified into certain professions and we have yet to see those responsible for the frauds that nearly brought down the world's economy serve any time in jail.

The times--they are a changing.

Now, not all of this bad. Good riddance to the persecution of homosexuals in the name of religion. Good riddance also to female mutilation and forced marriages. Good riddance as well to inquisitions and killing in the name of gods who seem merely capricious and hostile to human beings.

But what is left when these things are gone? Those who might point to US Constitution as a moral imperative now must face the fact that the supreme court of this country which interprets the document has now become just one more political voice. No absolutes there anymore. To quote the constitution is to sound merely quaint or ignorant these days.

Yes, as we change as people, as we become more diverse, everything has been put on the table. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot: our certitudes have fallen apart and will not stay in place. In the face of this, we find ourselves forging new and perhaps unthinkable ground: Are the moral certainties of the ideas and ideals that have guided us still who we are as a people?

Normally, I have no patience with the Tea Party and its adherents because they would like to impose the old monstrosities back on us. But I do agree with them on one point. Once the moral certainties started to crumble, it was a slippery slope. I happen to think such is a good thing. They do not. Unfortunately for them, the world is changing and history is not on their side.

Yet, the question of what matters is a powerful one. What do we agree on that can bring us together in even the faint start of conversation?

It would seem that the Sandusky affair and his tragic victims are one thing we can agree on--at least if we are not pedophiles. This gives me hope. Perhaps one of these days we can have a rational discussion with one another and reach a new consensus on who we are as a people.

True Facts and Our Political Process

When I was teaching freshman composition at the University of Hawaii, I used to find little tricks to remind students about various writing faux pas. When it came to redundancy (saying the same thing twice), my colleague, Lillian, turned me on to the idea of "babby puppies." A puppy is already a baby, I told my students. It must have worked, because they always aced redundancy on the quizzes and often used the term when critiquing one another's work.

Until now, I would have said that "true fact" was just such a baby puppy. But, thanks to the wonderful folks who are part of our current political process, I'm not so sure.  It seems there are facts and then there are "facts."

I hadn't thought that the word "fact" was that controversial. I'm with Pilate in asking the meaning of "truth," but then the concept of truth gets into a whole ethical/philosophical debate over first causes and infinite repercussions (as in who goes to hell and so forth). But facts? Webster says it's what actually exists, something experienced directly, and something known to be true (there's that pesky truth again).

Still, the way I have always used it, a "fact" is something that can be proved by something called evidence. It's like being pregnant--there's no being a little bit pregnant: you either are or you aren't.
A fact is or it isn't.

Apparently, I'm wrong.

It all started with Sarah Palin and her rewiting of Paul Revere's ride, which led to so many people trying to rewrite the Wikipedia article that the site had to be shut down. She decided that Paul was riding out on some kind of NRA crusade for the right to bear arms. That so many people wanted that to be real suggests to me that the word "fact" is slipping its moorings. It seems to be surging ahead into the absyss of "It's a fact because I want it to be."

In other words, given that somewhere these gleeful would-be lexicographers were exposed to the real Paul Revere if only briefly, that poor little word, fact, has now  morphed into meaning faith and belief. And, as we all know, faith and belief are among the most elastic of words, unaccountable to anyone for what they choose to mean.

Today, we get politicians, one after the other, distorting what I would grudgingly call "reality"--define that one, someone, please (after reading Why Does E=MC Squared?, I'm not sure about reality either). The disconnect between what the data show and the conclusions drawn from it is rather breathtaking.

Well--I'm going to take an English teacher's stand here. Please let's leave the word fact for things we can prove scientifically (as in research, empirical experiment, and surveys and such). And let's use the word "opinion" for those things we enjoy spouting to the world without benefit of proof or logic.

Believe me, I don't want to deny myself or others the pleasure of watching demagoguery--it's great fun. But as my British mum used to say, it's mutton done up as lamb. She was talking about people not acting their age, but you get the idea. Let's leave facts out of this and stop hitting one another over the head with our ignorance and insulting our intelligence by calling it a "fact."

If you have to call it a "true fact"--it's probably not.

Keep Calm and Carry On: A Prescription for US Politics in 2012?

Recently, I ordered a poster from the UK that bears the words, "Keep Calm and Carry On." It was commissioned during WWII, to be posted everywhere in case the very real threat of invasion became a reality. I was drawn to the sentiment because I see it embodying life in a nutshell (according to the British anyway). It says, if the Germans should beach their landing craft along the south coast of England and advance inland by machine gunning everything in sight, then the best thing to do is just to keep calm and carry on.

The poster is a reproduction of one that, mercifully, never had to be put into circulation. Hitler got distracted with a little place of geography called Russia and called off Operation Sea Lion, which was the invasion of the British Isles. It was a while before the British learned this, so thousands of these posters were printed in anticipation. They must have ended up in a landfill somewhere since only one has showed up almost accidentally, found in a box of books purchased by a second-hand book store. It has been an immediate UK and international hit. It's pretty enough with its bright orange color with stiff-upper-lip white printing, but I think it's the universal appeal of the sentiment that attracts people--at least that's what got me to buy it.

The poster calls for patience and concentrating on daily life as a way to deal with adversity. It implicitly denounces those who might panic and since it bears a stylizing crown on the top, it suggests that this is official government policy. Since I doubt the Nazis would have been much interested in having people carry on with their lives, the poster is meant for those whose with lives turned completely upside down. Have patience, the words say, this too shall pass if we can hang on to what we can of our lives, subject of course to fighting the Nazis street by street as Winston Churchill promised when he said that England would never surrender.

I have the poster framed on my office wall and I look at it when I am tempted to over-react to the state of US politics and the media frenzy that has been stirred up. Just when I think we can sink no lower, I find the bar has been lowered yet again. The Republican campaign has long lost any connection to real issues. It has become a slug-fest of slogans. If this is Tuesday in Louisiana, by all means start in on contraception. Wednesday and New Hampshire? No problem: dig out don't tread on me flags and yell about freedom.  Virginia on Friday: raise voices about abortion and punishing women for wanting one. Texas on Saturday? hit on illegals and health care--promise to make medical care available only to the rich and employed--if the poor die off in larger numbers, well that gets rid of a useless population; who cares about joblessness anyway--if people were any good, they'd be employed already.

Does anyone really mean what they say? I rather doubt it. Good sense has been drowned in the stampede to appear as narrow-minded and judgemental as possible. Meanwhile, the rich get richer with money they can never possibly spend in their lifetimes, the middle-class becomes poor, and the poor drop off the map.

Next week I go to the UK to visit family where I know I will be asked about this current political mess. "What's going on?" they're going to ask me. I haven't figured out yet quite what to say. If I explain that none of this matters because no one really believes that any of this is going to be acted upon after the election, I'll be met with blank looks. The British election cycle is over in a few weeks rather than the long, drawn-out bloodbath the nominating process has become. If I say it's all window dressing and entertainment, they'll wonder about how reliable we are with our nuclear capacity. Do we really think war is the only solution for people who disagree with us?

I know I won't try to explain the almost mania that has gripped the US--mainly because I don't understand it. I come from the school of steady as she goes, try for the best for everyone concerned, and keep any one group from dominating the others. I'm going to say instead that I'm trying to ignore most of it. There are very few people interested in having their minds changed. In fact, the dominant interest right now seems to be finding people of like mind who can reinforce one's prejudices.

I suppose this all will pass. These periods of insanity usually do when someone gets asked, "Have you no shame?" Then the noisy minority faction among us goes slinking away and the rest of the country tries to forget they ever existed. Until then, I guess all we can do is keep calm and carry on.

Whence Cometh Limbaugh?

For anyone outside the US, our latest brouhaha (outside of the presidential primaries which are rapidly becoming seemingly endless background noise) is the personal and venomous attack made by a radio "personality" called Rush Limbaugh on a woman who dared to try to testify before an all-male (go figure) panel on contraception. She tried to tell this panel of dessicated elders that hormones are prescribed for a variety of reasons beyond contraception, such as ovarian cysts, endomotriosis, and debilitating menstruation.

She was not allowed to testify before the all-knowing patriarchs determining women's bodily needs--but that wasn't the worst of it.  The young woman, a law student, was subject to several days worth of rant from this "commentator" who, clearly and ignorantly confusing the morning after pill with the daily cycle of hormones, proceeded to call her a slut and a whore who was probably having sex every day (why else would she take a pill every day for 21 days?) and who was expecting that her medical insurance should cover its cost.

Commentary has been hot and heavy on the subject and Limbaugh's show has experienced an out-migration of advertisers (probably temporary as such is the way of the advertising world). There have even been attempts at humor: such as women legislators introducing bills to the effect that if women have to wait 24 hours and have invasive ultrasounds before terminating an unwanted pregnancy, men should have to have 24 hour waiting periods and psychological evaluations before they have vasectomies (which deny birth to thousands of potential children). Such are the follies among us.

I find more interesting the question of where all this hate and venom comes from. Could it be that an overweight, middle-aged man, with a string of failed marriages has allowed his personal animus to propose that the US go back to the stone age and that the women be stoned for annoying the men?

What his ranting reminds me of is the terrible hatred we saw on US TV when the first Black students were admitted to an all-White high school in Little Rock. It was uncomfortable for me to watch White faces, men and women both, screaming at the children going up the school stairs protected by armed guards. It seemed then that nothing would ever change. Now, all these years later, when these same people seen spitting and hissing on TV are contacted, they are embarrassed and ashamed. The world has changed.

I see a similarity between those ugly White protests and Limbaugh's over-the-top spewing of resentment and hatred. What they have in common is the passing of an era that was comfortable and familiar to the people who had felt themselves superior.

WWII began sounding the death knell for segregation. One by one the barriers fell or were kicked down. Segregation ended first in the military. Then it moved into the social realm during the Johnson administration. All along the way, it encountered resistance from whites because it was one of "knowns" that Whites were superior--except time and again it was proved that they weren't. And they didn't like it. What they had grown up believing was no longer true--their lives were no long secure and the things they had "known" and built their lives around were no longer acceptable.

Now, it's the women. How comfortable it must have been when women stayed home and existed to serve. They put everyone's needs before their own. Yet, even then, no matter how exalted "mother" might be in the household, she was a domestic servant regardless of whether she willingly accepted that role and tried to find pleasure in it. Anyone remember Marabel Morgan and "Fascinating Womanhood"?

But WWII changed womanhood too. The women discovered they could work and earn money for it. In fact, they could be independent and many of them liked the feeling. They started protesting and standing up for themselves. They stopped seeing the role of domestic goddess as their ultimate achievement. Many of them sought out education and started asking hard questions. So the revolution started and those who had been comfortable with the old ways, with women in their place, now had the harsh reality of generations of women who could not only compete but seemed to be taking over areas like professional schools that had been comfortably reserved for men. It was no longer easy to dismiss a woman as too "emotional" when she was staring you down in the board room.

In this regard, Rush Limbaugh is simply of his sex and of his generation. The world has changed around him, and he doesn't like it. He represents the angry generation of men who grew up with one idea about women and now find that the women no longer know their place in his understanding of it. But it's not just men. All those women who denied their own talents and saw their role as ministering to their families must be wondering too. Of course, they can't admit that doubt or it would be the same as saying their lives were wasted. They only thing they can do to resurrect their dignity and the rectitude of their choices is to vilify other women who chose another path.

Ah me. All this hurt and resentment and bitterness. The world has changed. The world is not going back to what it was. It is no longer a White world. It is no longer a male-dominated world. We might just as well get on with it and stop throwing stones.

Why Organized Religion Needs to Go

My thoughts on religion are hardly a suprise to anyone who has read my previous blogs. I have had major reservations in the past but have been inclined to concede religion to those who feel they cannot live without it. Recent events have now convinced me that any good provided by the world's religions as they have evolved is far outweighed by the damage they inflict.

I've always believed that religions shut down human minds. Sometimes this can be helpful, as when Christianity provided social cohesion and something other than warrior values for the warring European tribes. The problem, however, was that instead of standing aside when its role was over, Christianity entrenched itself and became a corporation--enriching itself and crushing any opposition.

And that's what Christianity is now--a vast corporation employing thousands determined to make a living by making people fearful and then offering salvation for a price.

Christianity's corporate strategy has been  to cherry pick rules and regulations from a supposed holy book that offers up two thousand year old solutions as if the world never changes. What does a nomadic, patriarchal, sheep-and-goat raising religion have to do with a world where we transplant hearts and travel in space? Even more pertinent, why are people in the Middle East killing one another over differing interpretations of teachings if not to preserve the power and income of supposedly "holy" men?

And the leaders are all men. Please note that. Old, dessicated, querrelous men. When the US Congress holds hearings on contraception that do not include women, they hark back to a fine tradition of men knowing what is best for women. Rush Limbaugh is also in that tradition. He sounds like a near-Eastern patriarch rousing the crowd to go stone a woman.

Women are involved intimately in the realities of life and they can spot bull. So they are a threat. Yet, they are also people that Jesus Christ specifically preached to and about. 

Even if someone wants to argue that religion teaches basic, enduing principles, will someone then tell me why one religion is considered "better" than another and worth dying for (or being made to die for)? If these are enduring human principles, then it shouldn't matter which set of principles one chooses to follow and there should be little to choose among them. But it does matter, particularly to those who make their livings peddling some unproven set of blue prints for salvation.

Anyone reading the bible for themselves can see that Christian leaders deliberately misread and even misrepesent (for their own purposes) the teachings of the founder, cherrypicking his teachings to whatever suits the Church's interests in maintaining power and controlling minds.

Listen to Jesus Christ talking, before he went off on a megalomaniac side trip. I am the way, he says. The way. Not the end.  He shows people how he looks at the world around them and creates parables from it. This is what they should do. Emulate him. Not adore him. When he seeks strength, he goes out onto a mountain to experience something larger than himself. He doesn't go the stones and bricks of human-made temples. In fact, he's trying to open the minds of his listeners, not close them for profit.

I'm reminded here of Joseph Campbell who, during an interview, talked about our image of god as being is the last obstacle. Of course it is. We've had contradictory images force fed to us since childhood--is this a kind, loving god who forgives, or a harsh judging god waiting to destroy us? Both visions are there in the bible. We can  see this same dichotomy playing out in our politics: the extreme right is the vengeful god, condemning non-conformists to various circles in hell, while the extreme left tries to accept and forgive the human vices and even, gasp, such terrible things as illegal immigration.

You're not supposed to be "Christian" and inhumane at the same time--something Arizona seems to have mastered when they chain a woman in labor to a bed so she can't raise her arms or hold her newborn. Good going, Sheriff Joe.

No, the wars over religion are not done. But it's time they should be. And we can start by getting religion out from between us and the world, looking through our own eyes, recognizing religion for the corporation it is, denying all religion-generated fear of death, that most natural of our physical processes, and allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed and grateful for the beauty around us. This will bring us a lot closer to god, spirit, the universe--or whatever you choose to call it, than any canned sermon or pathetic bleating from some politico pandering to the most self-righteous among us.

American Politics: The Domination of the Stupid

Well now we know--there's research to prove it--that people of lower intelligence are drawn to simplistic ideologies that answer complex question of existence and ethics by spewing out easy answers in the form of slogans.

The sad thing about this finding is that it ought to be emabarrassing. In contemporary America the fact that the stupidest among us lead under the slogan of "good old-fashioned morality" seems almost to be a badge of virtue. Recreating history and blabbing non-existent "facts" has almost become a rite of passage. Media lap it up because it's good for controversy--and, presto, we have candidates for public office who are stupider and even less informed, not to mention hypocritical, than those who support them, or at least these people are pretending to be (if by saying that I don't give more credit than they are due).

I guess you've got to show your bona fides--lack of education and intolerance in order to appeal to those carefully undereducated to be incapable of looking benearth the surface presentation of sloganeered morality.

But what the heck are these "morals." Scratch the surface of Michelle Bachman and Santorum and you will find bedrock "values" flying counter to the Jesus they insist on flaunting and complete lies enough to make a worm puke. Instead of being exposed, this crap is being lauded. The majority should rule, Bachman says piously. God help us if they ever do. That's how we got the Holocaust. Hasn't she ever heard of the "tyranny of the majority?" I suppose not since she attended a religious (evangelical) university, which has selfish reasons (power and money) to want to monopolize people's minds.

At this point, I must admit I fail to understand why anyone would send their children to religious schools and then reinforce in the home the dogma fed to close their children's minds. That's amost child abuse. I can only suppose it has to be with parents wanting compliant children and imposing the fear of a god and hell to reinforce their authority. How puny.

I am all for taxing religions just like any other corporation since they meddle in politics now and since they seem to believe they are people. All this flap over whether the government should force religions to cover contraception in  medical plans offered to their employees (many not of the same religion) needs to be turned around. How dare these religious hospitals impose their religious beliefs on their employees? How dare they presume to judge women who terminate unwanted pregnancies when they deny the services that would prevent these pregnancies in the first place? How dare they impose their religious beliefs on people coming to their hospitals when there often is no other choice in the region that they serve? Shall we now justify female mutilation by saying it is a religious practice and the government has no right to regulate it? How about cannibalism? Is that a religious right? It has been so in certain cultures.

Freedom of religion means freedom from persecution not freedom to do anything they want, including making scads of money and paying no taxes for the nation's common good.
As a woman, I am sick of supposedly celibate old men trying to regulate women's bodies. What is it about a woman's body that so fascinates them? Are they jealous? Are they afraid they missed out on something that they threw away in their younger years?

I can't say that only unintelligent people hew conservative these days. The smarter ones are using it to their own benefit and catapaulting into or maintaining themselves in the 1% where all the wealth is. If the wilfully uneducated are the true believers, the smarter ones are the cynics. They've figured out to use the others. As one of my commentators put it to me: you can't fix stupidity. I would add, particularly not when being or pretending to be ignorant is a source of pride and social cohesion.

And What, Pray Tell, is a Conservative?

It's not often that Sid and I have conversation about political things. He is moderate, leaning Republican. I am moderate, leaning what I call common sense because I definitely do not fall into the category of "liberal." Political conversations in our house are usually muted so neither of us gets either overly passionate at the idiocy of the political process (particularly now) or too depresssed over the state of the world.

Still, today we started talking about the definition of the word "conservative" Exactly what does it mean--and I mean to us rather than to political parties who have their own agendas.

Sid looked at me quizzically when I asked the question and repeated the definition of conservative as "someone with something to conserve." "Yes," I replied, "but what is the definition of something? What exactly are we trying to keep?"

I realize this interesting question is capable of many answers. Some people just want to conserve their money and the means by which they make it. Others want to conserve the nation as they know it--the bastion of privilege for the succcessful (and if you're successful, the world looks pretty all right to you just as it is).Yet others may look back on the world as they once knew it, when things were comfortable and assumptions unchallenged.

I sympathize with all this. I suppose we all can. But the devil is in the details and even looking back on my life, there are some awful details along with some bucolic memories. Let me explain.

I was born on the south coast of England. We're talking Beatrix Potter here. Daffodils in the spring. New born lambs dancing on the Downs, walking along the Sea Front, and taking the train to London. Lovely. Nostalgic. People didn't have a lot and seemed content with it.  However, and to be bloody British/American about it--my brother died in infancy because there weren't the anitbiotics to keep him alive. I have three bridges and on-going dental work because British dentisty was primitive then. And, even better, the British school system decided when I was eleven that I was not university material. My mother emigrated to Canada in part because of the latter and I went on to earn a doctorate and work as part of an academic team that RAN a major public state university. To Britain, I was a throw-away. America welcomed me and was rewarded by my contribution over time.

Given this background, it's no surprise that I support state investment in public education, state involvement in health care, and state guarantees that everyone has a chance.  Until the "conservative" movement broke onto the scene, I thought these were American values. The past few years have been a wake up for me.

Sid, on the other hand, had what I (and I think he) consider an enchanted childhood. He was raised in small-town Cheyenne, his mother stayed home and raised her childen (mine was a single mother who struggled), and his father walked home for lunch. He was encouraged to go to university and to have a profession. Things may not have always been easy, but he had the solid support of his community behind him.

Gosh--I'd like to conserve that too if I'd ever had it.

I think the difference speaks to what we mean by "conservative." I'll go out on a limb and say that "conservatism" means trying to maintain /impose (take you pick) the values and ideals of that time in our lives when we were the most comfortable.

For me, the most comfortable time was when I was in college at the University of Hawaii and, for the Ph.D., the University of Washington (Seattle). I didn't have scholarships because for most of that time I wasn't a US citizen, but the tuition (particularly in Hawaii) was something my husband, Chuck, and I could afford and he believed in my talent. It was the first time that anyone had done so beside my mother.  It's THIS experience I want to "conserve."

In in the interest of "conserving" then, I have no problem offering some version of in-state tution to highly talented "illegal" students who graduate from high school because I speak from my own experience in saying these students will return the investment made in them. The fact their parents were illegal does not elevate me to raptures of indignation--that is the matter of luck. I came into the country when being British entitled me to special treatment because of "allotments." I was merely lucky in the times.  I also have no problem with making sure that there is some rudimentary medical/dental care available to people who need it, regardless of whether those people are "worthy." At one point, I wasn't thought "worthy"--in class conscious Britian, I wasn't see as being a "clever" girl who could rise above her "class." I feel it does me no honor, nor those who gave me my chance, to sit in judgment of others who may yet serve the nation in unexpected ways.

Yep--I'd say I was conservative, although the Peters and Newts of the world would never see it.

Many among us should just be grateful that their prescriptions for others were never applied to their ancestors (at least if they're not Irish and Asian) and would benefit from standing back and defining their own use of the word "conservative."  As my hero Shakespeare says, give us all our just deserts and not one among us would escape whipping.

Welcome conservatives--if you are brave, do what I have--look in the mirror and be prepared to shudder.

Things I Have Learned

The most valuable lessons in life are usually the ones we learn for ourselves and often the hard way. When they work properly, these are the things we can count on--the rock solid foundations that form the cornerstone of our changing selves and our understanding of the world and societies we live in. In fact, it's my own experience that once we let other people dictate what we see in the world--that's when the trouble starts.

We are something of a flawed species. I'm not original in this thought by any means. The various satirists throughout history--from the ancient writers at the dawn of written communication until media stars like Colbert--have all had a field day with our fallibilities and self-delusions. For a species with the unique abiility to speak and think, we have quite a track record of refusing to use them. In constructive ways, anyway.

Our current policitical mayhem is a case in point. Our candidates for president are not questioning the foundational principles, instead they represent a dismal attempt to be the most bigoted, uncompromising exemplar of a set of principles that are badly in need of being examined.

How long, for example, are we going to allow our lives to be dominated by a set of rules coming out of the sands of the Middle East? All the religions developed there--Islam and Judaism and the latter's offshoot, Christianity--have the same foundational basis. They all need reexamination. If we don't like them ruling our economies through their oil, why on earth are we letting ideas developed by a group of nomads rule our lives and the way we think?

In the spirit (my own) of setting aside two-thousand-year-old agendas and looking directly at the world rather than letting anyone control my mind by telling me what to see, here's my list of the things that I think I know. I may be wrong, but at least they are my own ideas rather than ill-digested pablum, which is what I see all around me.

1. All religions and political ideas sound plausible and idealistic when presented in their most abstract form.

Take Christianity to its fullest implication of sharing with others and you get Communism. Take Capitalism to its extreme and you get the reaction of Marxism. There is a spectrum, a range. Do we understand that? Can we determine how far along a curve we are willing to go? Of course not. Self-promoting demagogues have stolen that discussion by substituting "rules" and "moral laws" supposedly to put us good in god's graces--as if anyone could--and many believe them.

2. All religions and political systems are to be judged not by what they say but by what is done in their name.

Yes, Islam is responsible for violence. Sorry. But so is Christianity. How many times do I hear people say that someone is not really Christian or not really Muslim. But on what basis? The Bible is full of smite this people and destroy that people. People who say Christianity is not a violent religion need to stop cherry-picking the Bible. Politicians who claim to represent god and religion need to be shunned--god does not need Texas politicians speaking for him.

3. Political leaders gain and retain power by telling people what they want to hear and concealing whom they really represent.

There are several well-established ways in which people become leaders. Some as they say are born to leadership; others have it thrust upon them. One would like leadership to be a sacred trust instead of a way to become rich. One of the first questions I now ask about anyone running for office is exactly where their money comes from. It's a given of human nature that we will vote for our own best self-interest. We need leaders who don't pander to us worst impulses by trying to make us feel moral for being selfish. This is a shared planet.

4. Systems created by human beings--religion, political, legal, educational etc.--are suspect because they are created by human beings.

There is no such thing as a perfect or infallible system. Even the founding consitution of the United States is not absolute and is not pefect. The founding fathers knew this because they put in provisions for it to be changed as needed. Much better to look at the consitution as a living document. Many of those using it to hit other people over the head have not read it, let alone understood it.

5. The poor will always be among us and the power struggle between the rich and poor is a given.

Aristotle made the case long ago: the rich will want the power because they have the money; the poor will want the power because they have the numbers. The challenge is to maintain the balance of these competing interests. Wishing the poor were different doesn't make them go away anymore than trying to make them more "deserving." What is the right balance? Ninety-nine to one doesn't sound balanced to me--in fact, it sounds like the firing solution for a civil war.

6. Complaining that the world has changed for the worse because it isn't like the ones we grew up in is a waste of breath.

The world changes, period. In our minds, it may change for the better or the worse, but our opinion is immaterial. The sun shines, the tides rise and fall, and the world changes. In fact, individually we are part of the reason that it does change.

7. Scapegoating others (illegals, gays etc) is one way in which we allow others to manipulate us.

It's high time that we looked at how much self-interest lies behind the current efforts to look for someone to blame for our own economic excesses. While we allow our focus to be on peripherals, we don't look at the underlying issues such as who's benefitting from our distraction?  As many have said before, follow the money. Power is silent and exercised in back rooms. It is not out on the media waves screaming about being reborn.

8. Few people allow themselves to recognize how our lives are now governed and controlled by corporate interests (see above: follow the money).

In the guise of free trade, which is free only for corporations to send jobs abroad, our health, food, poiltics, media, mililtary, entertainment, and energy and so forth are under corporate control or influence. And you can add to this religion (those TV ministers are millionaires). This whole idea of  a nation "under god" is a fraud. It can be traced back to the late nineteenth century when big companies had a PR problem and paid big money to ministers (who else?) to conflate capitalism and Christianity--not that it was hard to do since the Puritans had conflated it before them (if you're rich, it's proof god loves you).

And, finally:

9. It is almost impossible for people to give up money once they have held it in their hands.

I always found it easier to pay my taxes if I had never seen the money to begin with. This is a general principle: it is much easier to give a tax cut than it is to rein it back once given. Tax cuts are a short-term subsitute for hard thinking in the long-term.

A Sour World

Recently, I took down one of these blogs because it bored me. I was giving the same old message of 'we need to look at ourselves' at a time when no one wants to.  It takes rational disinterest to stand back from the pleasures of one's prejudices, and we're sorely lacking in that as a nation and as a world. One day, we're going to look back on the lunacy and wonder what we were thinking. But that's for later.

Right now, people want to hear only what agrees with the minds they have already made up. We've just lost one of our major public intellectuals--Christopher Hitchens--and in reading the tributes being published for him, one theme stands out. People who didn't like his ideas had little to offer in the way of debate with him--they resorted to name-calling because they couldn't muster decent arguments. I read him even when he dabbled in lunacy (he thought the neo-cons were the only way to stop Islamic fundamentalism) because it was an interesting lunacy. When he moved back to the middle, I cheered because I at least needed him to be an independent, inquiring, moderate in order for him to be a moral compass.  He was right about proud (and ugly) anti-intellectualism around him.

I'm no Hitchens--that kind of intellectual brilliance drives me back to writing because I cannot sustain the type of debate he exemplified. But I can learn from him. What I see in his work--and also attempted in my own--is the revelation of the very sourness that lies in the basement of our being.

We are at root tribal creatures. We herd. We want the loud-voiced leader who spout maxims we don't have to strive to understand (we're also lazy, of course). We want a religion that flatters us into believing we have every right to eat whatever walks or flies on this planet. We want politicians who benefit us in various ways (mostly getting out of the way of our making money). We want a culture that never changes and people who believe like we do.

We are greedy and paranoid. We want to be protected. We may make noise about wanting to be independent, but let there be one listeria-cantaloupe outbreak, and hear the cries for government to protect us. We treat money as if it is something real rather than just an artificial representation of labor value, and we live in fear that some undeserving person might get something we didn't.

We are also aggressive and territorial. Religion's only excuse for existence is the preaching (more or less successful) of a set of values and ethics. Too bad that once religion gets established, it becomes just like us and uses our herding instincts and paranoia to its own advantages. Want to be a member of a herd: join our congregation. Paranoia? No problem. We've got redemption on tap, not to mention confession. Need to work out your dislike of people who don't think like you? Great--we have a crusade you might be interested in.

I'm not talking here exclusively of the US elections--prime horrors though they are--but of the tendency of the whole human race. People offer up short-term solutions on the belief that political actions can somehow change basic human nature. Well, they can't. In another hundred years, who the heck is going to care whether we have gay marriage? illegal immigration? In less than that, medicare and social security won't be a problem because the baby boomer generation will be gone, and we'll be crying for population. We may be very glad of those illegals we have now been led to despise (many married to and parents of Americans).

Things change. We don't seem to.

One thing I've learned about us and our politics--our demand as fleas for a greater voice in managing the dog--is that we get what we deserve. Right now I can't imagine why anyone would want to lead any country, let alone the US.