Skin In The Game

I travel a lot.  On one of my recent trips, I found myself with a little time.  Watched what appeared to be a hardworking (strong, calloused hands) black man in tan overalls and a hoodie waiting for his ride to pick him up.  The looks he received, even the stares.  The cops who came to ask questions. 

There is a lot that an African-American male, especially one of the poor working class, typically has to go through.  Things that we with the melanin-deficient skin rarely consider.  Like consider what an assault on one’s psyche that must be…

Parentis

There is no love—and there is no worry—like that of a parent for their child.  Of any age.

Right Or Wrong, "The Strong"

It is a destructive human weakness, even more prevalent in men than women, to follow "the strong," blindly if necessary.  And to wave away or dismiss afterwards the grievous errors, illegalities, injustices, and destructive things they did.  The only focus seems to be this emotional fixation that they were “strong” and “tough.”

It would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic, but the same people afterwards are only too ready to condemn all the others in other places for doing much of the same thing.  Blind hypocrisy and lack of self-examination is far, far too common.

Disposable Labor Units

We burn out far too many of our good middle class professionals.  Use them up.  Take away their enthusiasm for life with the endless grind and needless change at work places severely under-labor staffed.  Then they get sick, or they “check out” mentally and emotionally and we lose their productivity. And those are the “lucky” ones who don’t get the pitiless boot.  And often, they die too early as well.  

DoI

As I reread all the Declaration of Independence reprinted in the newspaper yesterday, I had a thought:  How many people, in how many countries, that we have been in in the last 60 years, would read those words and think, “how bitterly ironic.”

Seth Rogen Addendum

How timely my recent tirade against Mr. Rogen’s “work.”  He has incensed North Korea to the point that it is making strong threats against America.

How is Rogen so clueless that he thinks the North Koreans would have a sense of humor?  And how could anything about someone presently alive (and a head of state at that!) being the target of assassination be acceptable, let alone amusing?

More grist for the mill about how he comes across as truly clueless, classless, talent-less.

Emotional, Knee-Jerk Reactions that Feed Preconceptions

There is a large element of “the Left” or “Progressives” or “American Liberals” that is just as ready to be irrationally offended on their emotional issues as the “Right” and “Tea Partiers” and “Conservatives” have been on theirs.  In this case, the issue is “assault.”

Let’s be clear in this mindless chattery we live in:  Assault, including sexual assault, is unfortunately prevalent in too many places in our stressed and barely connected society.  But assault by strangers?  Still rare.  Yet do all the incensed chatterers on the airwaves and in print and online make a distinction and avoid misconceptions?  Uhm…rarely.