#235 – Dick Bernard: The "sustainability" of Rage

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It was a bit over a year ago – July 24, 2009 – when I wrote my first blog post about Health Care Reform.
It was about that time when I got the first of many forwarded e-mails raging about intrusion of the government into health care policy, citing chapter and verse from some huge draft bill then beginning to float through Congress. The intention was to “kill the bill”.
August, 2009, became the “days of rage” when Congresspeople came home for recess, and were tarred and feathered by hostile loudmouths, whose performance was duly reported in the media.
It was a very nasty time.
In due course, a few months ago, a Health Care Reform actually passed Congress and was signed by the President. It was by no means adequate, but under the circumstances it was the best that could be done.
Since then, the focus of the Rage has been turned to other things, most recently, once again towards Muslims and their places of worship.
Rage, as it usually manifests in Anger and Fear, is no doubt a good seller. Rage, and its ‘children’, has a good market.
Sometimes I do wonder, however, how sustainable or even useful rage really is.
Endless rage is really debilitating. Worse, even if its aims are realized, its results are rarely positive. So…you defeat Health Care Reform – you “kill the bill” -, or burn down the site of a proposed Mosque. What do you really accomplish?
I don’t have the data, but I think I can very safely say that in vast numbers of murders, the killer initially feels a positive rush of accomplishing something really good*. “Take that, you ____ .” Often the victim is someone well known and close to the perpetrator – I’ve heard police say that intervening in “Domestic disputes” is among their most dangerous duties. A 911 call to somebody’s house is not one approached casually.
Up until now, it has been easy to identify the angry and rageful in the political debate. They appeared at rallies with outrageous placards and quotes. They despise and they hate, openly.
Last Saturday’s gathering in Washington D.C. marked an apparent change in tactics by those behind the organized rage: it was described as a gathering of nice down home folks; all polite, no signs. A very family friendly event.
It was all a tactic.
The rage continues, only it is better hidden. The smiling person without the sign is the same person who had the hateful sign in public a few weeks ago. All that is different is the marketing image.
As the righteous killer always finds out, the pleasant rush of success at his or her accomplishment is short-lived. There are negative consequences to killing someone or something.
Rage is difficult to sustain, and it is very unhealthy to the person who carries it, particularly long term.
The current campaign of rage, even if it appears to succeed short-term, will not last. But it can do an immense amount of possibly irreparable damage to our society at large.
It is up to us to be the witnesses for positive and continuing change.
* – A number of years ago I attended a very interesting study series on the “Ten Commandments”, conducted by a Catholic Priest and Jewish Rabbi. One of the text references said this about the Hebrew law on Murder: “The Hebrew text does not state “you shall not kill”… but “you shall not murder”. The Sages understand “bloodshed” to include embarrassing a fellow human being in public so that the blood drains from his or her face, not providing safety for travelers, and causing anyone the loss of his or her livelihood. “One may murder with the hand or with the tongue, by talebearing or by character assassination [emphasis added]. One may murder also by carelessness, by indifference, by the failure to save human life when it is in your power to do so.” Etz Hayim, Torah and Commentary, The Rabinical Assembly The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, p. 446
By this standard, contemporary American Politics would cease to exist, or have to be considered a society of murderers.

#232 – Dick Bernard: Politics on a Stick

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Yesterday was the opening of the Minnesota State Fair, and like much of Minnesota, my State Fair gene kicks in, and I’ll make my way there, zombie-like, making my usual rounds, having my usual “health foods”, and come home again. It’s an annual ritual. I can’t help myself….
Every two years, coincident with the State Fair, comes the intensity of partisan politics and the endless parade of political advertisements on radio, television, and fliers in mailboxes. With large populations to reach, candidates must advertise. It is an essential.
But as “Nutrition” is to Whatever-is-on-a-Stick at the Fair, so “Truth” is to Political Advertising. Nutrition and Stick Food are oxymorons; so, often, are Truth and Political Advertising.
In politics, the intention is to make oneself look as good as possible; the other side as bad as possible, while seeming to tell the truth. This is at its most perverse from the assorted political action committees that have high-sounding names, but represent very narrow constituencies who prefer not to be known to the public.
Oddly, “we, the people”, not only enjoy dishonesty, we seem to crave it. What an odd way to pick our leaders.
Caveat Emptor.
Most people are willfully ignorant of politicians and the position they take, and politicians are wary of the dilemmas of honest politics, so I guess it is wishful thinking to imagine a more enlightened day when political argument can be intense, and those who participate can be trusted to take honest positions without need to trash their opposition or misrepresent their own…. But I can dream.
In the meantime, for those who do care, and do participate, I think it is important to make every effort to get to know the candidates, particularly the ones you are inclined to support, as well as possible, and to actually take the time to work for them in the ways that are available: money and time being the primary ones.
There are excellent candidates out there, well worth supporting. Often times their positive attributes are buried underneath a fog by their opponents, usually in negative political attack ads. Best to simply dismiss these and seek out some semblance of truth from other sources, which are available. And to judge the candidate not only one or two favorite issues of yours, but to consider the reality of the tensions they have (or will have) to daily experience in faithfully representing their diverse constituencies.
Personally I do think there is a major and substantive distinction between parties in this instance, but this blog is not a place to highlight that distinction.
I do offer, however, a historical picture of who controlled the government in Washington D.C. from 1977 to the present: Congress makeup 1977 on001. I felt compelled to do this chart in April of 2009, two and a half months into the Presidency of Barack Obama, because, even at that time, Obama was being labeled a failure by his enemies.
As I say: Caveat Emptor.

#221 – Dick Bernard: Flogging the "Truth"

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Yesterday’s news brought three bits that seem very much related and pertinent. Then, today, came a John Stewart piece that is an appropriate summary.
1. A St. Paul man, Koua Fong Lee, was released from jail halfway through an eight year sentence for criminal vehicular homicide. The judge said he was entitled to a new trial, and the County attorney said they wouldn’t be asking for a new trial. In other words, he was innocent of the charges for which he was jailed. In our system, the injustice of four years in jail is now called justice. The entire story is in today’s papers. The Minneapolis paper front page headline says “A FREE MAN“. If Mr. Lee is lucky, most people will believe that he got a raw deal in being sentenced in the first place; if he’s unlucky, some will say he got away with murder.
2. Last night a news clip featured Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, U.S. Senate Minority leader, talking in politician-speak. What he was saying, without saying it directly, was that “compromise” is not in the vocabulary of today’s right-wing politicians. “Just say No” is what passes for bargaining…and it has worked, if the only definition of success is making sure there is as little progress as possible towards a moderate centrist country, and in the process re-taking control. McConnell was lying, in a politically acceptable way.
3. Yesterday afternoon came an e-mail commentary from a friend, speaking about another piece of recent national news, and commenting in effect on both of the above: “If people – millions and millions of people – still think that Obama is not even a US citizen, then any other facts are really beside the point to them. how do we navigate in a political waterway where facts are void? I have not figured this out.
But I am very much understanding now what the head of LaPrensa told me in Managua, Nicaragua, when I visited there during the Contra war of the mid-80s. La Prensa was their newspaper and one of [then-President Ronald] Reagan’s big beefs with Nicaragua was censorship of the press. So, we asked the editor of the newspaper if he censored the press. He said yes. We asked why. And he said something like this, “Here’s what we censor. There are people who create images of the Virgin Mary crying, and they say that she’s crying because the Sandinistas are in power. We say we’re not going to print that because it’s not true. They say we are censoring.” I really get that now – does free press mean we have to continue to let “news” stations like Fox report falsely – tell true lies? Is/Should lying really be protected as “free speech”?
My friend makes an important point.
In #1, above, Koua Fong Lee was let down, apparently, by a less than effective attorney, and in addition didn’t have the benefit of knowing that other vehicles similar to his would later have similar spontaneous acceleration problems, causing a tragedy 2006.
In #2, Sen. McConnell was politically lying with a straight face…his lie wouldn’t even be considered a lie in today’s America. It would be talked about in different kinds of words, like “spin”. But its intent is no different than any bald lie told by a kid to mislead or deceive.
Between the politician and the public stands (supposedly) the media, who we have come to trust to convey accurate information.
That trust has been more and more violated – witness the Breitbart-Sherrod video fiasco recently (the intentionally false editing of a video to make it appear the speaker, Sherrod, was saying something essentially opposite to what she was saying).
One is taking a big risk believing anything at face value from any medium.
We can choose to be trusting and naive when it comes to picking our source of news. It is dangerous to ourselves and our society.
Post-script, pre-publish: as I completed the above draft, in came another e-mail with this 10 minute segment from John Stewart’s Daily Show about Congress’ failure to act to pass a bill to give medical care aid to 9-11 First Responders. In the end, in my opinion, Stewart is talking not as much about Congress itself, as he is about we who are manipulated by sound-bites and political ads.
Caveat Emptor.

#215 – Dick Bernard: Believing oUrSelves to death.

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I have chosen the blessing (or curse) of receiving and sending lots of e-mails. I have not warmed to the banter that seems to prevail in Facebook, and I will probably never be a part of the 144-character Twitter culture. I like handwritten letters, which are essentially extinct. Open and rational conversation amongst people with differing points of view, who actually respect and listen to other points of view, has essentially vanished, at least in my observation.
With all the means of communication at our disposal, that very abundant means of communication has made for a dangerous time for US in the U.S. We have more ways to communicate less.
Today, we have the right (and the opportunity) to pick and choose from a menu of beliefs, and to then isolate ourselves within that particular belief. We do not bother with other points of view. We strategize to make our point of view dominant. Of course, the opposing side is similarly engaged. Never do the ‘sides’ meet, facing the opportunity (risk) of having to defend their point of view, or listen to that of the opposition.
In the process of isolating ourselves into small clusters of beliefs, we are killing ourselves as a nation.
No question, simple Belief is comforting: one does not have to be bothered with differing points of view. I believe. So should you.
Ten years or so ago I had glancing but very direct contact with Belief:
My then-brother-in-law owned a small house with small payments in a small city. His mother lived with him, paying him small rent, till she died. Along the way he became convinced that riches lay at the end of the Minnesota lottery and an array of other get-rich-quick schemes. He believed that he would win the lottery or some sweepstakes, and he continued to believe right up until his house was foreclosed, and the lock changed on his front door. He was hospitalized at the time, and it fell to me, the only survivor in the family, to deal with the mess.
He died in 2007, essentially destitute, still believing….
So, my relative was an idiot, you say?
He damaged himself, no doubt; but only himself. He never married, no children, nobody but himself suffered from his fantasy.
But there are endless “believers” in this or that, who insulate themselves from reality by simply refusing to acknowledge its potential existence.
Even more of a problem are the institutional leadership fantasies that have been killing us for many years. I’ll cite the most recent and, to me, a most interesting one:
A week ago, I was at Catholic Mass in the Cathedral in Bismarck ND and saw a little bullet in the church bulletin. “Religious Liberty Restoration Amendment. Have you had an opportunity to sign a petition to restore legal protection for religious freedom? If not, we have petitions at the parish office. The office is open Monday-Friday, 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM.”
It was a bit odd that said petition was not available in the vestibule. At home I looked it up on the internet, as you can. It is a ND initiative. Being Catholic, it didn’t take a practiced reading to know what they are about. Two ND Bishops were the lead signers. The intent very very clearly is to guarantee religious liberty to people who do not wish to abide by certain laws or beliefs with which they do not agree. It is easy to fill in the blanks on this, but I won’t. The petition is a cynical attempt to implement a particular religious belief, by public referendum.
The next night, at a motel in rural ND, I saw a potential unintended consequence if this initiative were to succeed: some tv show was talking about a Church whose “Blessed Sacrament” is Cannabis. I guess if the amendment passes, that church can come up to ND.
The next Sunday, I was a church in a rural ND town, and the church bulletin was talking about the proposed amendment: “…petitions signatures are being gathered from Catholics across the state of North Dakota…at [the local church over]…several weeks…only five individuals have signed the petition….” Apparently the ground swell is not that great, but once again, this attempt to covertly market a minorities beliefs as mandate is an example of a mind-set that is quietly killing our nation.

#190 – Dick Bernard: Four Films

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Someone looking for me would not start at movie theaters: movies are an infrequent destination.
Still, in the past seven days I viewed four films in four very different venues. Each of the films had (and have) diverse messages…beyond the films themselves.
Last Sunday, the destination was The Minneapolis Film Festival showing of a documentary, “The Unreturned” by a couple of young filmmakers. Nathan Fisher, one of the two who made the film, was in attendance. The film covers a topic essentially untalked about: the fact that 4.7 million Iraqis, largely of the middle class, and representing perhaps a sixth of Iraq’s population, were displaced by the Iraq War, mostly to neighboring Syria and Jordan. (Iraq, before the war, was roughly the population and geographical size of California.)
The Unreturned views the world through the lens of several of these refugees, who didn’t want to leave Iraq, and would have wanted to go home to Iraq, but cannot for circumstances beyond their control. At the end of the film, one person in the audience noted that 4.7 million refugees was essentially equal to the population of Minnesota (5 million). This is a huge number, with equivalent impact: like the entire population of Minnesota uprooted and ending up in Wisconsin….
I think the 200 or so of us in the theater last Sunday would agree with the later assessment of this film, ranked among the best in the entire festival.
Monday night, a friend and I hosted a meeting at a south Minneapolis church for 30 representatives from 22 twin cities groups which have an active interest/involvement in Haiti. We showed the film “Road to Fondwa“, which can be watched on-line for free. Road to Fondwa was filmed a couple of years ago by university students. Its theme is rural life in Haiti. Since it was filmed before the earthquake of January, 2010, it shows how life was before Fondwa was devastated (Fondwa is near the epicenter of the quake). I was particularly taken by the notion of “konbit”, a Kreyol work meaning gathering, cooperation, working together. We could use a lot more of that!
Friday afternoon I attended a showing of another Minneapolis Film Fest entry, Poto Mitan, yet another young film makers entry. The Director of this film, a young professor at New York University, concentrates on five Haitian peasant women struggling to survive Haiti’s harsh economic realities. Each of the five women tell their own stories in their own language. Filming began in 2006, and the film was released in 2009. Like all of the other films, this one is subtitled. At this showing, the Director, Dr. Mark Schuller, was with us, and led a discussion afterwards. He’s a very impressive young man.
Then there is the fourth film, actually a 12 hour documentary over a period of weeks on the History Channel. It is called “America: the story of us“, and I was really looking forward to it when the first episode played a week ago Sunday night. My anticipation turned rapidly to disappointment (though I intend to watch the whole thing) because it became obvious that the intent of the film was to portray America’s history in the image of some old conservative politicians and big business and entertainers. The politicians have, so far, been regular on-screen “experts”, and the production apparently is underwritten by a major U.S. bank. It is too early to judge the entire production, but my guess is that this America will be portrayed as a heroic place with few warts, won by free enterprise, guns and military prowess. So be it. I’m waiting to see how the Iraq War will be spun, and the Obama era. Google America the Story of us and find lots of reviews of this epic….
The first three films do one thing that the fourth film does not: they allow the real people to do the speaking about the reality. In the last one, so far, it is only the experts that have the say.
If the youth of this country are represented by the first three filmmakers, we stand a chance.

#170 – Dick Bernard: "Big Brother is [Manipulating] You"

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Yesterday I went through the aggravating exercise of converting our television to a new system required by our provider, a company not to be named, though it shares the first three letters of “company” as the first three letters of its name.
For some weeks we had been warned by an endless trailer on screen that if we didn’t get their conversion equipment – at no charge, of course – our TV reception would be interfered with until the equipment had been installed. So, I dutifully ordered the box and the remote, which took twice as long as promised to arrive, and set about to install it, always easier said than done.
The installation finally succeeded, after a Helpful Technician for the company, Com…., helped me through it (and before I noticed the toll-free number that would virtually automatically do the same thing.) During the lulls in installation, the Helpful Technician, in response to my question, said this new technology was to make it possible for Com…. to bring more programs to our home. “More band-width”, he described as the function of that new box plugged into our TV.
The aggravating task concluded, I spent some time practicing with the new remote, so that I could at least tell my spouse how it worked.
Scrolling through, I came across C-SPAN, truly one of the benefits of the early days of the cable revolution, and happened across a tape of a U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing where Senators were quizzing the CEO of Com…., the son of the founder of the company, about a proposed merger of this mega-provider with another mega-media company. The hearing was interesting enough to spend some time watching.
The Senator from Mississippi got his turn to quiz the executive, and proudly pointed out that Com…. got its start as a tiny cable company in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1963. In the hearing room, out of camera sight behind his son, was the Founder of Com…., now a very old and very wealthy man, who was introduced and poked his head into camera view to be recognized. (For over 40 years, Com…. has headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, hardly small town deep south any more.)
“Tupelo” rang a bell for me. I had purposely been there one time in my life, in the summer of 1966. I had gone through Tupelo because it was the birthplace of Elvis Presley, the music icon who burst out of obscurity when I was in high school in the 1950s (“Heartbreak Hotel”, and on and on). I liked Elvis. It was probably not the best idea for me to go through Tupelo in 1966 with my grey Volkswagen with Minnesota license plates, since those were tense civil rights times in the deep south. But I came east to Tupelo via Oxford, Mississippi, and continued east to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and arrived home safely.
Back at the hearing, the very-smooth testimony continued. Of course, there were only benefits to this proposed mega-merger. Someone else, from the Consumer Federation of America, pointed out from the same hearing table that the distinguished CEO had left out of his testimony one very important fact, and brought that to the deliberation.
I continued to experiment with the remote, and in the end came to the conclusion that the only reason for the modification was to facilitate Com….’s making much more money from consumers like ourselves, and taking business away from lesser providers, like the local movie theaters and purveyors of videos. Ditto for the proposed merger. Now our house can smell of freshly popped popcorn….
Such is how it is in the land of the free and the home of the brave in 2010.
Things have changed since Elvis left Tupelo in 1948, Com…. was born there in 1963, and I passed through in 1966. They haven’t all changed for the better.
Caveat Emptor. My spouse, who watches more TV than I, but increasingly finds it a wasteland as well, wonders how long it would take for the ‘free’ box to result in higher fees for Com…. service.
In the end, we will all lose, including the monopolists who have virtually an open road to riches.

#130 – Dick Bernard: "the gods must be crazy"

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December 13, 2003, I arrived back from Haiti, all imbued with idealism, but pretty certain that Haiti’s democratically elected government would be deposed, though not sure how or by whom. I had met a lot of people who were standing by President Aristide, even though it was clear that his government was being starved out of existence, unable to really accomplish any of his goals for lack of resources. He and his government had been marked for extinction.
January 11, 2004, the St. Paul Pioneer Press printed a column of mine, which Common Dreams still archives, and which speaks for itself here.
As time went on, it became more and more clear to me that the United States, in alliance with Canada and France, was out to get rid of Haiti’s elected leader and his entire Lavalas party. This ultimately happened late at night February 29, 2004.
A week before the coup was accomplished in Haiti, distinguished Knight-Ridder senior military correspondent Joseph L. Galloway wrote a column appropriately headlined “If U.S. returns to Haiti, get the job done“. Essentially he endorsed the 1915 U.S. “solution” for Haiti, in which the U.S. Marines began their occupation and control of the country for 19 years “Good men and true, and they took and pacified the entire country with a loss of only three Marines killed and 18 wounded” was the essence of his story. He appeared to support the Bush administrations decision to restore democracy by (effectively) destroying the existing democracy (which he referred to as a dictatorship – interesting how words can ‘sing’.)
Haitians of course have a different spin on the reality of those 19 years from 1915-34, and all the years before and after, including the coup d’etat of February 29, 2004, and its fore- and after-effects. But who cares about that? Old news…. Most recently, Aristide’s Lavalas has been denied standing as a political party in upcoming elections for supposedly technical reasons.
The 2004 coup did not bring peace and prosperity to Haiti. Less than a month after President Aristide was safely out of the country, Haiti disappeared as news in the U.S.
In May, 2006, Mr. Galloway and I had a brief e-mail correspondence about the current situation in Haiti. He had just retired from Knight-Ridder, and said, after defending his earlier comments, that “I’ve been going to America’s wars for 41 years…from Vietnam 1965 to Iraq January, 2006. I am not going to study war anymore. Instead, I shall study peace.”
About Haiti, he said “what I said and meant [in the February 22, 2004, column] was that if we went in again we should be prepared to stay and help rebuild a nation and educate a new generation of Haitians to a different kind of politics and governance than they have endured for centuries now…nobody seems willing to invest what is needed to make Haiti something other than a nation of poor people ruled by a very tiny oligarchy.”
Truth be told, U.S. troops scarcely touched Haitian soil during and after the 2004 coup. Nation-destruction was accomplished by U.S. Aid to anti-government de-stabilization folks, while the legitimate Haitian government was economically starved to death.
After the coup, the United Nations, through “Peace-keeping” forces, became and remains the U.S. surrogate in Haiti. It is far too early to tell what changes in direction will come from the Obama administration after eight years of a Bush foreign policy. I have heard that there is now an immense embassy in Haiti, an enduring symbol of American pre-eminence in that still desperately poor country.
I bring this up, now, since most recently Mr. Galloway has argued against U.S. continuing engagement in Afghanistan (here). He is now extolled as a hero of sorts on the Left.
I would like to believe that his motives are pristine and sincere, that he ‘beat his sword into a plowshare” and “won’t study war no more”, but like the Kalahari Bushman who found an empty Coke bottle in the desert, and couldn’t conceive of what in the world it could mean, I’m not sure where (or if) what he says and what he means intersect. I feel like the Bushman and that Coke bottle on the desert floor: “the gods must be crazy”*.
What I see, now, as the “gods” are the “chattering class” – talking heads of all ideological stripes – who are attempting to establish their own version of reality. Left, Right, makes no difference whatsoever.
For now, Mr. Galloway is my sample worthy of study. And he’s not coming across as very real. He is highly respected, deservedly so. I’m hoping that he truly had a conversion of heart in 2006. (I tried to meet him in person in D.C. in May, 2006, but it was a close call…didn’t happen. I’ll hope to get this writing to him where he now resides.)
Meanwhile, I stand by my comments in my blog post on December 1, 2009. The ice is thickening here….
* – Some video clips from the 1980 film “The gods must be crazy” are available on YouTube, for anyone interested.

#116 – Dick Bernard: Denying Reality

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Recently, I’ve read several articles, research based, on the truly dangerous behavior of humans:  denying reality.
The long and short: we live in a society where we believe what we want to believe…and most of us are in a position, at least for the moment, where we can get away with it.  Climate Change?  No problem.  It’s just odd weather, and the unusual drought conditions somewhere don’t affect us.  I can still buy my bananas at the store – I’ve come to like a banana a day.  Never mind that in my youth, bananas were an exotic fruit rarely if ever seen, and that went for things like oranges too.  Living an entire life in North Dakota and Minnesota, I don’t run into banana plantations with any frequency.  For me, bananas just happen, like Santa Claus.
Our self-deception goes on and on: Incredible numbers of people still believe the long-debunked fiction that Saddam Hussein was somehow behind 9-11, thus justifying a war against Iraq which destroyed that country, and has almost literally bankrupted us.
As somebody said, when confronted with the reality about one of those ubiquitous provably false e-mails that she’d published in her local church bulletin: “I’ll believe what I want to believe.”
Yes, we can get away with deceiving ourselves.  For now.
But that’s a bit like making your bedroom the middle of a never used country road.  For a while it will work, but in the end you’ll be unpleasantly dead.
Sometimes I wonder if there exists in our society some kind of collective self-loathing, a “death wish” as it were.  Common sense says that we’re flirting with disaster long-term, but we thumb our nose at it, and admire the creativity of the people who craft the lies we are expected to believe.
Recently I’ve been noticing a repetitive ad during the nightly news which reassuringly asserts that there’s 100 years worth of natural gas left in our country.  The subliminal message is “not to worry”.  It reminds me of those old cigarette ads in magazines where the doctor was confidently smoking the cigarette, or the with-it woman was enjoying her smoke, or the cowboy on the range (who later died of lung cancer)….  Ah, marketing.
So alarming percentages of us believe that climate change is not a problem, even though the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is on record that it is a serious problem.  Or that our life styles don’t need to change, even if continuing our life styles will assure no future at all for the generations beyond us.  Or that  Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, even though the very people who perpetrated that fiction years ago, later officially and publicly debunked it themselves.  The list goes on and on.
Are we fools?
The people who approved that ad about the 100 years of natural gas were speaking to people like myself who survive by natural gas as this winter begins.  I don’t know where, exactly, my natural gas comes from; all I know is that if the temperature gets below 70, the furnace comes on….
“100 years” was deemed by the marketing strategists to be a good reassuring number.
As it happens, at the same time I’ve been noticing this ad, I’ve been completing a family history of my Dad’s side of the family, which came to Quebec from France nearly 400 years ago.  I’m doing a history about the first 300 years, ending with my Dad’s birth on December 22, 1907.  (He died a dozen years ago today).
In context with that family history, 100 years is not much more than a blip of history…and I’m not delving into the hundreds of additional years of recorded human history in France.
More so than any generation in history, we can assure our future destruction.
We seem not to care….
Here’s a couple of articles I’ve seen recently on this topic: Your choice.  #mce_temp_url#; #mce_temp_url#
UPDATE: November 7, 2009
Jeff Pricco: Another good article for the deniers: #mce_temp_url#.
Just like the public is saying Obama is not delivering Change.
When the culture of leverage and debt and not facing reality in household or government finances has been three to four decades in the making…profligate spending on credit and a culture and mindset that we can have everything we want and more and not eventually pay the bills…has set in…no President or Congress (an institution I have argued is set up to defeat change) can remedy this in 6 to 12 months….
If this is not a slow painful sluggish recovery with little growth, it will not be successful.  If we opt for more fake bubble remedies that buy us prosperity on credit, we will see the mother of all depressions soon.
Carol Ashley: I think that the more one lacks self-confidence, the more one is apt to not change one’s mind in the face of evidence to the contrary.  In psychological terms it’s known as cognitive dissonance.  People are very good at adhering to their beliefs about what they think they know and justifying those beliefs.
I can go back to child-rearing and look at how parents are loathe to admit they are wrong in front of their children. There seems to be an “understanding” that admitting that one is wrong decreases their authority with their children.  In fact, children tend to often know when parents are wrong and respect for parents goes up when parents can admit when and where they are wrong.
As my nephew and I confront each other on beliefs about what we think we know, we can both attest to how difficult it is to let go of something we believed in the face of evidence to the contrary.  Dan and I are probably unusually willing to confront these things.
For myself, I am aware that i will first become defensive and then, when alone, take a closer look, and then if I find satisfactory evidence, can and often do admit I’m wrong.  But how many people even know themselves that well, much less are able to take the “loss of face,” because that is what it feels like even if it gains you respect for being able to admit the other is right?
It’s a challenge for all of us.  It’s easy to blame the far right for this, but we are all susceptible to some degree.  the far right might be more susceptible but understanding can bring compassion instead of just fighting against them which brings even greater resistance.  We need to understand the fears behind it.
On the other hand, that probably works better on a personal level than in the political real.  Maybe.
Comment back to Carol on her last paragraph: I think personal and political should be dealt with as synonyms.  As Tip O’Neill so quotably said: “All politics is local” (as in, all politics is personal!)

#112 – Dick Bernard: "La Grippe"

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This morning a New York Times bulletin said “Obama Declares H1N1 Flu a National Emergency“.  The summary said “Mr. Obama had signed a proclamation that would allow medical officials to bypass certain federal requirements.  Officials described the move as similar to a declaration ahead of a hurricane making landfall.”
Preparedness is great.  But my initial reaction to this is it’s time for us all “to get a “grippe”, to not over-react.  (“The grippe” is how I remember my grandparents describing the illness that we know as the flu.)
Last night on the national news the resident doctor expert was asked about the significance of the current flu outbreak, and the fact that so far 1,000 people have died in the U.S.  He more or less “mumbled” an answer that the outbreak is very serious and unusual.  Best I recall, the camera angle was from behind the doctor, with a concerned-looking anchorman listening earnestly to him.  He wouldn’t be pinned down on how bad 1,000 deaths thus far actually was (an average of 20 per state over a period of some months.)
The news narrative is that this flu outbreak is a crisis.  It is almost a lead story: little kids crying when they get their flu shots; schools closing….
I don’t doubt the general problem or the need for concern, but I wonder to myself how much we are manipulated by those with a vested interest in this crisis, particularly economic interest.  (The same news program seems largely funded by pharmaceutical ads.)
We need to “get a grippe”.  Back in April on this blog I commented that my mother nearly died in the 1918 flu pandemic which, as pointed out at #mce_temp_url# affected 28% of Americans and killed 675,000 (in a country with a then-population of about 100,000,000, compared to today’s 300,000,000.)  (Her recollections of that near-death experience are in my April 27, 2009 blog post #mce_temp_url#
Absolutely, there is reason to be concerned and to be prudent.  (I’ve had my flu shot; we’ve had one grandkid get the flu and throw up at our place while kid-sitting recently…and my spouse became his caregiver when he had to stay home from school…it’s hard to avoid reality.)
But, I think it is also prudent to keep in mind that there is also a LOT of money to be made by milking public hysteria.  And as we’ve learned over the past decade, fear is a potent weapon.  The flu shots and mist are not totally without risk either.  This we tend to forget.
Obama’s caution, as noted in the NYTimes article, is prudent; I have a bit less confidence in the headline, and the spin….
My two previous blog postings on this issue can be found at #mce_temp_url# and #mce_temp_url#.

#100 – Dick Bernard: Thoughts at a Century of Blogging

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Sure, “century” is grandiose, since I’m celebrating, here, the 100th blog entry in just short of 200 days as a more or less official part of a blogosphere.  (To be “official”, you just have to be foolish enough to get yourself a space on the ‘net, and then post something on your bulletin board.  I don’t know how people like me rate against the Facebook or similar crowd, but I like to think I have more substance.  Maybe so, maybe not.)
I’m here to tell you that there are easier ways to become notorious: make me Keith Olbermann’s “worst person in the world”, and I’ll be far up the food chain; or make me the predictable columnist in the local newspaper – which would probably require compromises I’d have to make.
But I don’t plan to stop at 100.  Today is just the beginning of the next chapter.
It’s hard to get respect when you’re just an ordinary Joe wasting a few ciphers on the internet.
My biggest “fan” so far is someone who I collectively and methodically designate as “spam”.  In this class I get all sorts of requests and offers, including in languages I don’t understand.  I was warned about this in advance.  It’s an easy process to dump them, but they’re irritating nonetheless.
Earlier this summer, I learned first hand how low on the food chain bloggers are.  I donated $25 to an organization in which I am active, a “Friend of…”.  I was one of about two dozen who ponied up the exact same amount.  I asked if my blog handle could be included, and my colleague, the one putting together, looked at the blog, pronounced it very good (actually even better than that), but declined to publish the web address cuz then it would have to be done for all the others, most of whom were elected lawmakers or candidates.  When the flier came out, for each of these, their office was listed….  I remained just a name.
Most of the 100 blog posts thus far have been mine, but not for lack of invitation to others.  At least 10 people have been willing to submit at least one posting.  It would be nice to have more, but as the saying goes, “you can’t push a rope”.  The offer remains.
With all the indignity connected with the project, I still consider it worth it.  Commiserating with a friend who’s submitted a couple of entries, we agreed that the process of writing is a good way to clarify our own thinking about this issue or that. And going public, regardless of how many people actually see the thought, you know that someone, somewhere will catch one or more of the columns.  (I’ve had at least one candidate for Governor call me about something he’d come across on my blog; someone I’d never heard of in California actually sent a non-spam comment.)
I know that a few people do regularly read the blog, and so it is worthwhile.
I think back to those good old days when the local blogster was somebody who printed a few handbills which had to be distributed hand-to-hand to a select audience.  Some major thinkers got their start that way.  They’re quoted (and often selectively mis-interpreted) all the time.
So I trudge on….
Thanks for reading.
Now, how about you as a writer, publicist or whatever?