Remember The Others

“The free must remember the forgotten.”  Amnesty International

On this Independence Weekend, take a moment to think about all those who do not have your freedom.  The forgotten prisoners of conscience across the world.  There but for the grace of happenstance and fortune go you.

Millennials And The Future of Uncool

The Millenials should not get too smug.  They are not immune to succeeding generational divides.  The aspects they think are cool or hip and set them apart today—whether it be tattoos, body piercings, or just fascination with phone apps—will not be so much to the generations that follow them.

It’s the pattern of chronology. J

My Daughter Inadvertently Gave This Extra Father’s Day Message

My daughter follows the news of terror incidents against black Americans.  For the question, particularly appropriate today, of “How hard is it to be an African-American father; what does he—what CAN an African-American father—tell his kids?”, my daughter’s conversation provides some insight:

My daughter and her friend were talking about foreign travel.  Her friend:

“I don’t think I’d feel safe in foreign countries.”

My daughter:

“Oh, so you know a little then of what it feels like to be black in white America.”

"Diary"

Is “love” really love when it is selfish?

“You’re mine,” we hear supposed lovers say to each other.

Possessive.

“You are what I want.  You belong to ME.”

And then we wonder—actually, we DON’T think enough to wonder—why the relationships we have often become destructive, hurtful wrecks that disrupt and sometimes shatter lives.

A selfish society of individuals functions poorly in relationships.  A society of people concerned with trying to make others’ lives better, on the other hand, would be transformative, both at the personal level and the societal level.

Thoughts that came to me when listening to the David Gates’ and Bread’s song “Diary.”  The last two lines make the song.

Dangerous Drivel

People who have never truly experienced war often speak and write of it like it’s some romantic thing of glory that will solve much and inhibit little.

No.

War is the failure of humankind.  The times that it is necessary are very, VERY few.

Word for today in this all-too-early season of campaigning, which has become more the activity than governing or working for real, problem-solving, society-enhancing policy: Jingoism.

The Giant

The blundering giant noticed a creature crawling on the ground.

 

“It looks weak and thirsty.  I will help it into the blades of grass where it can drink the dew,” the giant thought.

It did not occur to the dim-witted giant that there used to be many creatures below his feet, and now there was just this little one.

His boots and his size protected him for the moment, so to speak, from the poison that was on the field of “green.”  A poison he did not even realize was there.

He picked up the creature and tossed it into the grass, then walked merrily away, whistling at how pleased he was with himself for his deed of kindness.

And the creature, which had crawled away from the poisoned ground where its fellows had suffered their fate, now writhed in its last fatal agony in the poisoned grass.   If it could have read, it might have known, in its last thoughts, the irony of the words on the large sign above its head: 

Lawn “Care.” 

Did A Generation Ever Love Its Descendants Less?

2014 was the hottest year on record, and 14 of the record 15 hottest have been in this century.  The 1998 El Nino year was the only other.

We have comforted ourselves in the selfish expectation that any results of our actions or inactions about the environment will only manifest significantly after we are gone.

Truly, we will be judged as evil idiots.

Are we not setting our world up for sudden, dramatic climate change?  The release of so much methane as the tundra and arctic regions thaw will accelerate climate change, probably geometrically. Already, places which once had moderate winters have severe ones now because the arctic is not warm enough to keep the cold air there, leaving the cold air blasts to sweep down.

Oh wait, the Chair of the Senate Environmental Committee says that only proves that global warming isn’t happening. Oklahoma, can’t you do better?

The Lawyer-ly Throttle

“Leaders” don’t do anything without “cover” from their lawyers.  While sometimes this prevents real problems, just as often it does one of two things: 1) justifies bad decisions; one just has to find enough unethical, uncompassionate lawyers, or 2) it prevents good decisions, from excessive fear of being sued.

Have We Become Numb To Statistics?

Half of US public school children now live in poverty.

Poor Effects

The poor have such lousy food options, and such high stress, that their bodies bloat to unhealthiness.  Which only enervates them more.

Silver Plus 20 Anniversary. Yawn.

Earth Day’s 45^th came and went.  A flickeringly brief news item.  But still the shills for the fossil fuels industry and their financial allies dominate the (mostly non) conversation.

And the assertive deniers—the invincibly ignorant—all too readily accept the shills’ utterly unscientific drivel. 

In fact, in this and many other things, they wear their certainty like armor to shield them from the real truth of the world that tries to touch them.

Dys

How sensible is it that we are expecting a dysfunctional government to supposedly try to fix dysfunctional systems and processes?

What Can I Say?

“Being a black man around the police is like being a mouse in a room full of cats.”  An African-American male. 

What does that do to man?  A man who has a child, especially a son, of his own? For generations? 

The harvest is not only bitter, but perpetual.

What we usually fail to see is how that affects the rest of us.  Because it does. MLK did not say that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere merely because he wanted the majority to empathize with the minority.  He said it BECAUSE IT’S TRUE.

And you don’t have to be a German union member, homosexual, or Jew in the 1930s to know that.

The More Things...Don't Change

The troubling thing about the movie “Selma,” as one African-American leader says, is its relevancy today: voting rights, police repression, lack of justice, etc.

Miss Much? :)

The clamor because I didn't post here on Sunday must be in dog hearing range, because I haven't noticed it, lol.

I was just going to point out, relating to the P&H postings:  Grover Cleveland was nearly 50 when he courted the 20 year old who would become his wife. 

Cultural settings, and, well, times, make for interesting observations.

Desperate For Help—That Only Comes From Those Little Able To Help

Many charitable organizations or true non-profits are so desperate for your small donation that if you give some pittance, you will be besieged with pleading successive supplications from them and others.  They don’t have big donors (because they largely are in opposition); they mostly only have you.  They are being starved because they have no big donors AND those they would get assistance from—the disappearing middle class—cannot even assist themselves.

To Forget and To Not

It is the little help and heavy plague of many foreign cultures that they cannot forget.

It is the little help and heavy plague of American culture that it almost always forgets.

No Canon

Don’t canonize the World War Two generation.  They were indeed great, and we owe much to them, but they had great faults too.  They accepted, largely without question, environmental damage in return for apparent economic prosperity. They created the CIA.  They passed the National Security Act. They wittingly and unwittingly embraced, without much remorse, all the gross excesses of anti-communism.  At the height of their voting power, they welcomed (albeit without always realizing it) an economic and political ideology that would end up gutting the middle class.  

Slush and Sleaze

Why do so many “good” politicians run crappy ad campaigns?  Because the only way they get precious airtime is if they play by consultant rules, because those consultants have the magic keys to that airtime. And those consultants know one game. 

Consultants who usually favor just one party, btw.

Democratic and Republican candidates and their campaigns write panic-like letters about how they have to have your money or the other side will overwhelm them.  Then they go on to win by a 70+% margin in their gerrymandered districts. 

 

It all comes across as so sleazy, one wonders if they truly stand for anything.

The ocean of money in our political system, and all its many effects before, during, and after a campaign.

The Oppression of the Individual

Margaret Thatcher famously declared in 1987: “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.” Revolting to think she is idolized, as that hyper-individualistic worldview has brought ruin for 500 years.

Don’t Hear Anything Bad About This One

While I do not know that I necessarily ascribe to the “Messenger” aspect of the Baha’i Faith, its “oneness of religions”  stance is appealing.   Bahai’i core principles:

Oneness of humanity and dignity of every human being

Freedom from prejudice

Equality of women and men

Spiritual solution to economic problems

Commitment to education and the search for truth

Harmony of faith, reason, and science

Highest moral standards

Improve the material, social, and spiritual life of each community

One of their proverbs stood out for me:

“Breathe not the sins of others so long as thou art thyself a sinner.”

I sure fail at that one now and then and need to do better!

The Game Is On

I couldn’t be bothered, the game is on.

I don’t have time for that, the game is on.

That’s so boring; besides, the game is on.

You’re right, the game is on.  It’s late in the third quarter and you’re behind by a lot.  Only extraordinary effort on yours and your teammates’ parts will avert defeat.

The game? It is your very future, your very freedom, and your descendants’.

Great Nations Do Not Impoverish Their Intellectuals

Tenured professors continue to get early retirement buy outs.  Not only are they costing the university money with their higher salaries, but they are a “bad” example for the newbie profs who are already, or about to be, getting shortchanged.  That is, no retirement program other than the false one available to most private sector employees these days, and lower wages.

The independence of intellectuals, so needed for society, was under siege before. 

And now, another wall has been breached. 

Tough Guys? It's Relative

Men’s vulnerabilities are complex.  Some men can take enormous pain and deprivation, but give them a flu bug and they shrivel in incredible weakness and intolerance.

Bother That

Does it bother no one that we prosecuted and jailed—at hard labor—Japanese for waterboarding?  That we apparently courtmartialed an American soldier in Vietnam for doing it?  And yet today we say when we did it last decade “it wasn’t torture,” or “it was justified,” or “well, maybe it wasn’t exactly right, but we certainly aren’t going to prosecute anyone for it.”

As conscience dims, a dark state fills the void.

Something we should remember whenever our desire for “safety” and “security” from possible terror attacks tempt us to give up who and what we truly are and should be.  Isn’t it better that hundreds, maybe thousands, of people POSSIBLY be put in danger rather than all of us lose our collective American soul?

Fish In A Barrel Satire

The congressman going to jail for money laundering and hiding his “business’s” profits?  He will be replaced by the prosecutor who didn’t try to bring an indictment against the cop who killed Eric Garner.

Karma To Me

It would have been my mom’s birthday today. Guess it still is.

How many times I hurt my parents thoughtlessly and unintentionally, so unaware and self-focused I was.  I didn’t care enough to know how my words and actions might affect them.  Like they didn’t have feelings, or if they did, were so tough nothing could affect them.  How childish I was, even as a near “man.”

I thought about that recently.  Because now it has been my turn with my children.