Last night I was returning from a meeting and happened across a portion of a speech President John F. Kennedy had given on this date, 50 years ago, one month before his death.
The 24 minute speech, to the National Academy of Science, is archived on YouTube, accessible here.
This is worth a reflective listen. Any pre-listening editorial comments by me are superfluous.
Your comments are solicited.
The ten days between Friday, October 11, and Monday, October 21, were fascinating ones for this, yes, “old-timer”. (I put those words in quotations because it’s all relative: the day I pass on, at whatever age that happens to be, there’ll be somebody who will have just said “he was just a kid”; on the other hand I’ve been in Medicare ranks for eight years already….)
But the past ten days were fascinating.
We spent the bulk of the time at a resort cabin near Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, just having a quiet vacation. Were it not for television and the local paper of record, the Wisconsin Journal, we would have had no clue from the people around us that America was (maybe) facing default on its debts for the first time in its entire history. I didn’t think that even the current Congress would dare jump off that fiscal cliff, but we were too damned close.
Meanwhile, at the Dells in fall mode, you would be hard-pressed to find evidence, from the people, that we were at the brink of something very bad.
On the Dells boat cruise we watched the dog leap the same small chasm photographer H.H. Bennett had his son leap several times in the 1880s enroute to his famous photographic experiment with a new-fangled speed shutter. It’s less than a six-foot jump, but I bet the young man didn’t have the safety net like today’s leaping dogs do! (An article I read suggests the photo had a “bit of flim flam” to it, but, even then it was for that generation of rubes! I wouldn’t have done that jump as a kid!)
(click to enlarge)
At Wisconsin Dells, ca 1885
At preview of En Avant, Minneapolis, October 11, 2013
Matt Rothschild, Minneapolis, October 21, 2013
PRE-NOTES: Directly related to the below post is this one published two days ago, on “Conversation”. Overnight came a long and excellent rendering of what is happening in Washington now. The first three paragraphs of the post catch the essence.
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“You cannot negotiate with people who say what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.”
Tweet from James Morrison, Oct 10, 2013
Some weeks ago I was at a meeting, and a couple of folks were sharing thoughts learned at another meeting some weeks before… (You’ve been there, done that. “Hand-me-downs” are very useful, often.)
One of them presented us with a single sheet of paper with this single illustration:
(click to enlarge)
(Here’s the pdf for later use, if you wish: Stick-Folk Wellstone001
What is conveyed is a simple lesson about everyone of us as beings wandering around the planet. The words hardly need explanation.
Of course, nothing in this world of ours is simple: if you match up this stick-folk with a second stick-folk, there will be differences in values, interests, etc. We’re not all alike. Think married couples, BFFs (Best Forever Friends), and on and on….
How about a nation of well over 300,000,000 stick-folk, perhaps three-fourths of them considered as adults and potential decision makers. That’s the U.S. of course. How about 7 billion people? The World.
Yesterday I used Mr (or Ms) Stick-folk in a small meeting. But I endeavored to spread her (or his) horizons just a bit.
I added to the illustration a bunch of circles…
…and asked the participants to put an “F” in the largest one.
Let’s call the “F” “family”, I said. Every one of us is part of many circles. In our little group, we could have come up with quite a list: colleagues at work, church, on and on and on.
But in these circles we know people, and here comes possibilities and complications.
I added a vertical line, with a plus sign at one end, a minus at the other, with a middle point. Let’s say the perfect person, the big plus, (from our point of view) is our self.
If the world believed exactly as I did, wouldn’t all be wonderful?
Of course, this isn’t true. We all know people who are diametrically opposed to us (“how can they be so stupid?”).
They say the same of us. The hard Right and the hard Left invest their time and energy shooting at each other across the massive middle, making points (“kills”?) but winning nothing. They dominate the communication we see on-line and in other mass media.
Can a determined stick-person permanently impose his/her world-view on everyone? Of course not. In comes negotiation.
At the meeting, I observed that if each person could positively impact on one or two others, a great deal could be accomplished. But this does not happen rapidly, and does not happen by duels at 30 paces. It is called building relationships, which fills many books by itself.
Up the side of the sheet I had several numbers:
6 – 61
8 – 78
10 – 56
12 – 76
9 – 6
What do these mean?
Very simple: in 2006, in Minnesota, only 61% of the eligible voters actually voted. 2008, 78%, etc. And Minnesota is ordinarily a very high voter turnout state, often leading the nation.
If those of us who are troubled by the Tea Party are honest, we will note that 8% or so fewer people voted in 2010 than in 2006. These are people who stayed home for all sorts of usual reasons, including Obama didn’t get single-payer health care, didn’t close Guantanamo etc. At the same time, the angry Tea Party folks came out en masse. (The source of the raw statistics for any wonk out there is here. You can find data for any state.)
In the wake of 2010 came Congressional District redistricting and the like, controlled in many places by those same angry folks that so vex us now in Washington and in many states. We’re finding that anger is not a good way of doing business, for a country, or a state….
What about that last “9 – 6”? That was the voter turnout (6%) in the 2009 School Board election in our prosperous children-laden suburban community. What a shame…. Why did people not vote, then? Your guess is probably accurate. You’ve been there, done that, yourself.
It is true, what the Tweet that leads this post suggests. And it is also true that this is how “negotiations” are happening, as we speak. “You” [the other] “can go to hell”.
When this mess is over, which it will be, some day, it would be good for all of us who happen to have lived that long, regardless of political ideology, to do some serious thinking about how we stick-folk can build our country of diverse opinions and spirits, rather than tear it to shreds.
Long-time journalist on politics, Eric Black, published a most interesting column in the October 7 MinnPost. Mr. Black has built a very strong positive reputation over many years as a reporter on politics in this region. He continues writing in retirement.
Succinctly, Black watched the 14 minute interview of John Boehner by George Stephanopoulos Sunday, October 6, in which Boehner used the word “conversation” 22 times in context with the Government shutdown in DC, as in “let’s sit down and have a conversation”.
Black’s column caused me to think back to July, 2012, in my own town of Woodbury, when the word “conversation” was used in conjunction with a community meeting about another word “taxes”. It was such a noble idea: one of the organizers of the conversation wrote a column in the local paper, and the papers editor wrote an editorial piece in support of the idea, and I wrote a column before the meeting which you can read here. Unfortunately, the links to the actual newspaper articles no longer work, but you’ll get the essence from my writing.
As I say, I wrote the column before the meeting.
I actually attended and participated in the event, which seemed to attract about 50 people. I again wrote about the meeting some months later, here entitled “Taxes, and other words”. (You’ll note the latter post was #51 about Election 2012. Politics as warfare did not begin this fall; nor in 2011. The intense warfare goes back to the mid-1990s. It is a war that is destroying us as a civil society.)
But, back to the word “conversation” and that community “conversation” in the summer of 2012.
“Conversation” is a positive word, and that’s why it is useful as a political word, which is why Boehner used it so often. But it is something different to put words into practice. “Conversation” implies a mutuality and it suggests civility and willingness to listen and compromise, and all the good things that go with a civil society.
But it has to be more than simply a word.
At the conversation in Summer 2012, we 50-or-so were pretty crowded into a room, and were divided into table groups of about six per table, for two ’rounds’ of structured talking about the word “taxes”. When the first group was completed (a timed exercise), we self-selected to another group of people at another table: new participants, same topic. The convenors were well prepared, and handled the sessions professionally. They knew the process.
My first group was the very embodiment of a positive conversation: good listening, good thoughts and ideas, accepting other points of view. It was a pleasure to be part of it.
The second group, not so….
I had noticed – they were impossible to miss – a band of adult roughnecks who seemed to hang together at the beginning of the session, and were loud and dominating.
I didn’t know any of them.
They apparently knew me, perhaps from that column of mine in the local newspaper or in some other way. And when we changed tables, four of them came to the table I had chosen, and one other person who’d been with me at the first table joined as well.
This group was the polar opposite of the first: two of the four were civil enough, but the other two were not there to listen and converse: they were there to dominate. It was, to say the least, an uncomfortable time. The sixth man in the group had participated at the first table; at this table, he said nothing – a wise strategy. I did my best to keep it all civil, but at least once had to take on the loudmouth who was not interested in other opinions than his own.
So, when I looked at Boehner’s use of the word “conversation” last Sunday, I had to look at it in context with the performance of his caucus in the House of Representatives, which is a bunch not interested in conversation except as a mechanism to control and dominate and “win” their agenda.
After the meeting I wrote to the lady who was convenor of the conversation, observing that I felt bullied in the second half of the meeting.
Judging from her response, she knew the characters, and understood.
The ladies who’d had the idea summarized the meeting to we participants, and talked hopefully about a followup session.
To my knowledge, that second session never happened.
I understand why.
This morning, last I heard, one of our five “outlaws” (one of their children is married to one of our children) gets on a plane in Minneapolis, flying to Washington D.C., for a reunion planned a year ago with several friends from the husbands Army days together in Vietnam times. They are from all over the country, and they have done several such trips together. Last year they decided that this year they’d meet in Washington, D.C. for the first time.
They are astute people, so most certainly they and everyone on the trip know what we do: that when they arrive, they won’t be able to tour any of the sites they came to visit. Congress has shut them down. As I pointed out in an earlier post, this reminds me of the famous Joni Mitchell song from 1970, here“>Big Yellow Taxi: “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, you [wreck] paradise and put up a parking lot.”
I’ll learn soon enough if/how this reunion trip went, including whether they boarded the plane to nowhere at all….
Meanwhile, the blather will continue unabated about whose fault this shutdown is, etc.
A Republican “Majority Survey” I filled out this morning (more on that at another time), gives a helpful hint about how the marketing of positions takes place. I was asked to rank-order the “most effective vehicle[s]” for Republican messages. I had these choices, and only these choices, in this order: Television Ads, Targeted Mailings, E-mail Messages, Telephone Calls, Newspaper, Radio, Internet Ads…and Other. (I chose “other”, and ranked all the rest equally, as least effective.)
The tragedy at the national level, whether short or long, will continue to unfold.
It seems basically to zero in on about 80 Republican Representatives – about 5% of the U.S. House of Representatives – for whom the Lord’s work seems to be holding the country hostage. Ryan Lizza, in the Sep 26 New Yorker, gives a helpful look at where these folks are from.
Perhaps a similar 5% of the “American people” are cheering on this disaster, for their own reasons. I know some of the people who are probably in this category. They are a bitter, tiny minority.
Meanwhile, back in the Twin Cities, yesterday we were at a rally commemorating the 1st day of the second year of the Lock-Out of the Minnesota Orchestra.
This was less than 24 hours after famed conductor Osmo Vanska had resigned (as he had promised to do) if no settlement was reached by midnight September 30; and, after the Orchestra Management cancelled a long scheduled concert by the Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City next month.
This is very big, and very bad, news in the international music world. Attending and speaking yesterday was the president of the 90,000 member American Federation of Musicians (AFM – their October 1 statement here: MN Orch Board AFM Statement Oct 1, 2013).
You’d think it would be noticed. But across the street from us, perhaps 200 feet away, at WCCO-TV, which bills itself as the most watched station in this market, no attention was paid to this news – at least, we saw not so much as a WCCO camera recording the proceedings. And the local Minneapolis Star Tribune, whose publisher and CEO is on the Orchestral Association Board, while printing a long front page article gave very short shrift to the Union position.
News in our society is managed (see the Republican survey choices above.)
Those of us in the gathering heard the Musicians Union version of what happened at the final negotiations session the previous day. It is highly unlikely that the Union version of the bargaining session will ever see the light of day in the greater community because of who controls the media in this town, and the power people who control the Board of the Minnesota Orchestral Association. (Next on this mornings work, I’ll give my recount of the orchestra situation, and some photos, etc., from yesterdays rally can be found here (scroll down to October 2. This particular post will remain the ‘filing cabinet’ about the Minnesota Orchestra situation.)
While I don’t have any personal investment in my “outlaws” trip to D.C., and they probably don’t have any personal investment in my outrage at the destructive behavior of the Minnesota Orchestral Association management destroying the Orchestra I love and have willingly supported all these years, I see our predicaments as essentially equal.
We ought to be a country that cares about each other.
We’re in a time of power politics now.
We’ll rue the day.
We must become engaged, actively, in solutions for everyone.
Comments:
from Joni H, Oct 2, 2013 (a Middle School Principal in a major metropolitan area, conveying a note from a teacher): Thought you’d find this interesting. If anyone wonders how the government shutdown impacts a single classroom… This is what you get [click on link] when you visit usgs.gov (a website that our school uses with it’s 8th grade earth science classes.)
Ugh.
From Flo H, Oct 2, 2013: Think about this. It’s in doubt as to whether we can legally hold the volunteer driven Hike for Hope on the North Country National Scenic Trail (under National Park Service supervision) on Sunday, October 6 but there’s no way that we can actually let the public know, at this late date, that it has to be cancelled. Now, if Congress decides that National Parks will be an exception and grant continuation funding, as some members of Congress are proposing …
It appears that re-opening National Parks is more important to some in Congress than providing resources for 8th-graders earth science curriculum or providing access to healthcare to all. Hope your classes and teachers will fill the empty class time writing to their Representatives, Senators and the President and Letters to the Editor decrying the lunacy of this shut down! Maybe the kids could also suggest a viable compromise. The adults in charge surely can’t figure it out!
From a long retired eighth grade earth science teacher, good luck!
Out of curiosity, I checked to see when the words “Tea Party” first became part of my vocabulary on this blog.
The answer: April 15, 2009: “Today is Tax Day, April 15, 2009, the annual celebration of the loathing of taxes. This day there will be a new spin on an old theme: “Tea Parties”, apparently well organized and heavily publicized by certain media (thus, not spontaneous “breaking news”), and supposedly grassroots protests against the tyranny of “taxation [with] representation”, in the model of the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773.”
It was my 7th blog post.
That post has been followed by 72 others including those two words, the most recent this one. That’s nine percent of my total blogs. I’ve paid personal attention to this angry rabble which has become so dominant in the American political conversation, most recently with the threatened government shutdown about to happen – perhaps – in Washington.
Scrolling through the subject headings of those 73 blog posts there is pattern of topics that only someone completely politically unengaged would not have noticed in the last four years; issues marinated in anger; an impulse to attack anything with even the slightest attachment to government, at least, aspects of government they don’t like.
The movement has been very successful. Here’s a brief history. At this moment, a small minority of the U.S. government is controlling actions there, and these are people who have no interest in the essence of government, the part which requires compromise. In fact, they detest government.
The Tea Parties greatest strength is our greatest vulnerability as a nation: it is unfocused, a rabble of fragments, and runs perfectly well completely on emotion. Facts and context are irrelevant. Tea Partiers tend to operate by soundbites, tunnel vision prevails, all that is important is winning, now.
We had a tea party Congresswoman here for several years. Michele Bachmann is still the Congresswoman, lives in our district, but is now Congresswoman in another district and there is a strong Tea Party Republican presence in my town.
So, the Tea Party is not an abstract entity to me.
Their local leaders are typically loud-mouthed bullies, usually big men with domineering demeanors. They are difficult to take on, but as is true with any bully, if confronted, they back off.
The “Tea Party”? Presently a pretty powerful engine, with no pilot and no rudder. We’re among the passengers, and unregulated, there’s a wreck ahead.
We can only hope some common sense prevails.
We’ll soon see.
Comments:
(see also on-line comments)
from Jeff P, Oct 1: Yes sir.
from Peter B, Oct 2: What seems to be missing from the entire “Tea Party” conversation is some assessment of its design function. The design function of a car is to carry people on roads from place to place. You would not use it for a house unless it were ruined as a car (or there was no gas anywhere). By the same logic, the wars, invasions and occupations in the Middle East have a design function, which is to be seen in the results: smoldering ruins and social breakdown, leaving countries wide open to plunder by the extraction industries who profited most.
The same strategy is being applied at home now. Remember the “Sequester?” What was done about it, except to quietly exempt certain functions useful to Empire? Nothing. Life got very much harder as a result, and it is not being repaired. The wave of municipal bankruptcies, cutbacks and collapses, both physical and economic, has swept across the country leaving homeless, destitute people in its aftermath. While politicians feigned helplessness, this was the result they produced, and I assert it was a successful operation conducted by their paymasters.
In the case of the “Tea Party,” what has happened? Wacky, reactionary, under-educated and misinformed “grass-roots” people have gotten a significant chunk of legislative power – at least, power to gum up the works – and have now “shut down the government.” But that was the whole idea in the first place. Whose idea? We must ask ourselves, who benefits from a disabled Congress?
Can there be any doubt now who has perpetrated this crime? It is an implementation of a very old strategy that has brought down many a government, notably the German government before the Second World War, but scholars could probably identify it in Roman times. The monied interests behind this “movement” don’t care a rip what form its antics take, as long as the Legislative Branch is totally disabled. Unless the perpetrators are branded as what they really are and brought to justice, it will play out as it always has. The country has been sold out, and so far, there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop this.
Some time ago, corporations, particularly financial institutions, acquired more actual, temporal power than any government on the planet. They are flexing this muscle, as the new governing system on Earth. The old governments work for them, are owned by them, and for generations, the US military has done their dirty work (read Gen. Smedley Butler’s potent little book, “War Is A Racket” for a basic education.)
After knowingly precipitating global environmental catastrophe that is now undeniable, the banking and corporate cartels know they are liable for compounding disasters on every front, from the economy to the dying oceans. Effective, rational legislative remedies for the multiple looming catastrophes we now face would require at least capping the size and power of corporations, if not revoking the power to create money from the tiny number of families who have actually controlled this function for so many years. If the cartels don’t destroy the Legislative Branch now, they see reason to fear that their feeding frenzy will come to a halt pretty soon. And then, never mind a slight drop in profits: they might be on the hook.
The cartels are going to stop at nothing. We are in a very serious process. It is happening across the board, and it began quite a long time ago. I call it “Neo-Feudalism,” but there really is not that much that’s “neo” about it. We will, or will not, know about the spectacular amount of suffering going on while our world is re-configured. Much of the process happened decades ago. But make no mistake, life is not going to return to anything like what we were used to.
Bizarre has become the normal in Washington D.C. politics, so it is easy to pretend “there they go again” – that it will all work out. One can only hope. But what if, this time, it’s the time for bizarre to become reality?
Do you favor the Shutdown of the U.S. Government if Tea Party terms are not met?
Yes or No.
I think the connection of Tea Party and Government Shutdown is appropriate, and I think there are only two choices: Yes or No. This is a very unusual position for me to take, since my entire career was in an environment of constant negotiation/mediation between people and groups of people with an intention to resolve disagreements.
My answer on the current Government Shutdown threat is NO.
Joni Mitchell catches best the reason for my answer.
Back in 1970, Joni Mitchell caught a wave with her wildly popular song, “Big Yellow Taxi”. You can listen to it here.
The refrain, adapted to todays Tea Party theme about wrecking government might be “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, you [wreck] paradise and put up a parking lot.”
The current shutdown issue is dead serious. It is not a Republican/Democrat issue (though the Republicans embraced and indeed nurtured the anarchist fringe of free agents which calls itself (and is called) the Tea Party.)
Very recently I read a commentary in Atlantic magazine suggesting that we haven’t seen this dysfunctional a federal government for over 150 years. There has always been political conflict between political parties, but, similarly, there has always been negotiation of differences and in the end, a minimum of game playing.
We’re in a different world. The main conflict right now is within the Republican party. This is no longer a Republican/Democrat thing, and veteran Republicans concede this point. This is a “my way or the highway” Tea Party move. And it is dangerous to our very Democracy.
What’s happening in Washington, now, is a struggle between ME and WE philosophies: are we a nation of individuals accountable only to ourselves; or are we a nation accountable to each other, and together responsible for a decent civil society.
The Tea Party types I know are very heavily into the individual rights wing, with very limited responsibilities, and those responsibilities only if they fit within their rights framework.
They are a minority of the population, but they’ve wiggled their way into a position where they can disrupt our tradition of good government.
We will all lose if they win even a temporary victory.
Their brand of governance, which has been evolving since before the current “Tea Party” craze began, is take no prisoners, win at all costs.
Even for them, such a philosophy will not prevail.
But if your Senator(s) or Representative vote “Yes” to in-effect shut down the government in the next days or weeks, they ought to be history next time they’re up for election.
This country doesn’t need their brand of polarity.
NO on a shutdown.
UPDATE, Sep 30, 2013: A very long summary of where this issue is at this moment can be found in the overnite “Just Above Sunset” here.
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A BRIEF MUSING ABOUT “WE” VERSUS “ME”
Little over a week ago I was out at the farm where my mother grew up. The farmstead is vacant now, and as happens familiar structures are deteriorating.
I usually take some photos. This trip the long vacant barn drew my attention, particular the old wooden stanchions for the twice daily milking of the family cows, usually by Grandma and Aunt Edith, sitting on three legged stools. I’m old enough to have experienced this before milking machines (which my grandparents never had, to my recollection).
(click to enlarge)
In a North Dakota barn, September 20, 2013
A short while ago I was looking for the oldest e-mail I had from a recently deceased friend who was anti-war to the very core of his being. It turned out to be a Nov. 10, 2005, e-mail asserting “26 lies by Bush people” about the Iraq War during the George W. Bush administration. If you’re interested, here are the 26: Bob Heberle Nov 10 2005001
About the same time (Sep. 12) came an e-mail to a group from another anti-war friend about the tense Syrian situation: “what is the true reason for [the U.S. planning on] invading Syria or lying to the American people? Regardless of the reason for lying would that not constitute reason of impeachment if not for lying then for war mongering?” Of course, this related to President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Then, just a day or two ago, President Obama spoke at the U.N., and his counterpart President, Rouhani of Iran, spoke at the same venue. But they didn’t meet.
And yesterday came another e-mail listing President Obama’s top 45 lies in his speech at the U.N. Apparently Obama is the champeen liar, and the folks listening to him at the United Nations are easily duped.
All the above assertions come from what most would describe as the Left. Of course, the Right is no stranger to assertions of Liar as well…but these were Lefties talking.
So, rush to judgement on the President? Not so fast.
What’s one to do about all this lyin’? Or is it lying at all?
Who has ever said “my, you look nice today”, when you know he or she doesn’t….
Introduce me to someone who says they don’t lie, and I’ll show you a liar. Of course, this includes me. We all fudge.
During the “26 lies” and “lying…for war mongering” time a couple of weeks ago I got to thinking about the reality of bargaining about anything…and bargaining at the global level is bargaining big-time. I spent a career in bargaining situations. They’re all about the same…the sides feel each other out for interminable periods. Through it all they bob and weave, deception is expected. Like bargaining in a market somewhere.
Bargaining is a complex process.
Starting with the most recent near meeting at the UN between Rouhani and Obama, there was comment about how the two avoided meeting in person. There was no hand-shake, even.
Charley Rose asked President Rouhani about this in an interview which played in part on CBS This Morning today. Essentially, Rouhani said that things like a Presidential hand-shake take time: Iran and the U.S. have had no direct relationship for 35 years, he said, going back to the end of the Shah of Iran and the subsequent hostage situation. He could have gone back further, to 1953 and mentioned the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian President Mossadegh engineered by the CIA. He didn’t go there.
But everyone at the international diplomacy level, you can bet, understood exactly what he was saying. Stuff like hand-shakes and photo ops and joint statements take time. In due time they will take place. Most of the action now is behind the scenes, between diplomats who know the game…and each other.
Things happen fast. As I was writing this, in came an announcement that Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterpart from Iran will be meeting further on what seems to be another whirlwind and positive development on the middle east situation. First such meeting since 1980, it was said. No cigar, yet, but things are looking a little promising within the international community, and now not only about Syria, but about Iran, too.
And about those “lies” Obama supposedly told in his speech at the UN: With hardly any doubt, everybody in the room knew the context and intent of those remarks, which were most public and part of the international record so long as there are records available.
History will be the judge of what or whether these “lies” were.
And in the lurching way that such things work, perhaps we are witnessing some positive history for a change.
In my opinion, very important global changing actions are taking place at the international level, and the Obama administration is a very important part of that, as are other world government leaders.
None of them are naive, and they are dealing with each other as diplomats need to deal: cautiously, perhaps deviously, above all respectfully, all the while trying to satisfy the rabble out there that is the population of all of their countries.
I see hope more than I see “lies”.
Just my opinion.
Comment
from Wilhelm R, Sep 27, 2013
Your “opinion” seems to be based on a set of assumptions which you do not state or have to state. You let your reader assume them. Could it be that today assumptions are personal and discretionary but not binding on anybody else. It used to be, that assumptions where the foundation on which societies and cultures where built upon and acted as “touch stones” for debate and discussion. Without them we are back in the depth of scholastics which pried itself to be able to take any position and successfully and logically argue its point. In such an environment nothing can get done and nothing can be resolved, everything is relative. In such an environment one does not even have to touch on the essential point a discussion partner raises but instead, all one has to do is to change the assumptions and begin the – an – argument anew. This also seems to lead to a situation where there is no need for taking responsibility for one’s own actions or demand responsibility from anybody else for their actions. May be this explains today’s tendency to urge us to “look forward” and not waste time with looking backwards what has been done has been done… This makes of course perfect sense since one has to assume that those actions were based on different assumptions and those assumptions where and probably still are as good as anybody else’s. They just seem to be lurking around to be picked up by a willing mind. With this however anything goes and justice is what power dictates or allows you to project. ( We seem to be back in the golden age Metamorphosis by Ovid writes about “Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo ….. The age of the golden rule where the gold rules) So what are we crying about. It behooves us – whoever us might be – to obtain and exercise power! … Just my thoughts but willing to not just state but defend them any time …..
from Dick: I like your first two sentences. I have noticed for a long time that hard and fast ‘sides’ develop where only one point of view is entertained, thus no argument, or even listening to another point of view. I’m not sure who reads my columns, here. It is more than a couple, that’s for certain. I try to keep the posts to newspaper column length (ca <700 words), and I write them as if family will read them, many of whom would be in direct opposition to me, ideologically.
Re lying, as one who grew up and still is Catholic, the Nuns did a good job on the Lying piece to we younguns. As I recall it, there were two general types of lies: of omission (leaving out some important data); and commission (a whopper). Of course, as one ages and sees communication in action on many fronts, you say infinite variations on those two general themes, but those were two words I remember, for some reason!
from NYTimes Bulletin, Sep 27 3:01 CST:
Obama Says He Spoke to Iran’s President by Phone
President Obama said Friday he had spoken by phone with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, the first direct contact between the leaders of Iran and United States since 1979. Mr. Obama, speaking in the White House briefing room, said the two leaders discussed Iran’s nuclear program and said he was persuaded there was a basis for an agreement.
Today at the gym I was treated to Sen. Ted Cruz doing his filibuster to supposedly protect Americans from the evil Affordable Care Act (called “Obamacare” by some).
Recently, a majority of the U.S. House of Representatives, for the 42nd time, I believe, voted to repeal Obamacare.
Those who follow this issue know the rest of the story behind these two symbolic – and very sad – actions, where ideologic rigidity and scarcely hidden hatred for the President drive decision making to attempt to destroy programs which will impact positively on everyone in this country.
Sen. Cruz, during his filibuster, spent time reading Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham” to his daughters, and expounding on the symbolism of Star Wars.
I know Cruz is young, but didn’t know how young (I decided to look him up): I have two children older than Cruz is. Dr. Seuss was a household staple in our house; when Star Wars came out in 1977, it was an instant addiction for my oldest son, and I took him to the first showing, and didn’t discourage him from attending the movie many times.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being young – years ago I was his age, too. But….
Up against the negative fantasies of Cruz et al, abuts a far more positive reality for the tens of millions of people of this United States who are about to have access to affordable health care. Apparently, this is seen as a threat to freedom: creeping socialism, which rhymes with communism, and is a synonym for evil amongst people who should know better, including those who have long reaped the benefits of Medicare and Social Security, or even of corporate and large employer medical care plans, and just don’t get it…and if the Tea Party has its way, will never get it.
So be it.
The people I don’t understand – well, I do understand, but it stretches credulity – are the young people (my oldest childs age – near 50 and down), who feel they don’t need health care, and don’t want to pay for somebody else’s medical problem.
Fools.
Just a couple of hours ago a friend came up to me to tell me about another mutual friend, Tom, who’s healthy as can be, a professional tennis coach, and was doing his daily 20+ mile solitary bike ride yesterday. He stopped at a fast food place for a snack, and choked on the food. Long story short, he had no ID on him, an ambulance picked him up and took him to hospital. He’s in a coma, and the prospects of any kind of recovery at all are dim. It took some hours for his wife to find out why he was so late, or where he was. Likely she used another society institution, 911, or a call to the police department, another civic institution we hope never to have to encounter. They were her safety net in this metropolitan area of 3 million.
When this unknown man was picked up yesterday, there was no question about paying a bill. Our country doesn’t allow people to die on the street.
Maybe that’s why the cynical young say “I don’t have to pay for insurance; they’ll pay for me if I need it”.
Maybe they’re (very sadly) right.
But what if everyone had this selfish attitude?
I learned my lesson about insurance very early, two weeks after I got out of the Army in 1963.
My wife was a new teacher, then, and coincident with my return home she had to quit teaching due to an undiagnosed kidney disease which would ultimately take her life two years later.
I could have gotten hospitalization insurance before she was diagnosed, but “couldn’t afford it”. As it turned out, she was uninsurable even then. Her condition was, it turned out, almost life-long pre-existing. Back then, I learned about things like public welfare, and the role of the greater community as a protective umbrella.
Yes, there are people so selfish and cynical that it doesn’t occur to them to consider themselves part of society. Rather, they prefer to cling to the fantasy that they, and only they, are in charge of their destiny, and everyone else should have the same responsibility.
Fools.
That’s how I see Ted Cruz Inc.
This morning my spouse, Cathy, is on a mission of mercy for a friend.
Cathy is very good at “missions of mercy”.
In this case, she’s going to a private school to retrieve the belongings of a troubled adolescent who was dis-invited (or, shall we say, thrown out).
None of this was a surprise, including to the youngster, who didn’t want to go to the school, and said so before the year started: “I wonder how long it will take them to kick me out”.
Less than two weeks, it turns out.
I taught junior high kids for nine years back in the 1960s, so I am not unaware of the nature of the ‘beast’. They were just less sophisticated then, and they were less sophisticated only because they did not have the array of information and options that they do now.
But the dynamic was the same: they knew all the answers, but they didn’t even have a clue about the questions.
Their future was NOW.
For most, they grew up, but for some the consequences were severe.
This particular student is a female.
I had great friends back in the 1980s, pillars of the Church, just absolutely wonderful people, whose adolescent daughter, their only child, took her walk on the wild side, coincident with her mother’s terminal illness. The young girl was a sweetheart before she went ‘south’, in the manner we all understand from having watched such things in our own circles.
A single parent, she had her baby, who would now be near 30 years old, I’d say, and she’d be about 45. She’s had twice as much life after the pregnancy, as she’d had when she became pregnant. I haven’t seen/heard from her since, but she’s likely out there, somewhere, perhaps recovered, perhaps not.
And she’s had her own teen go through his or her own times.
There are times, like this, when you realize that you as a parent are not in control. Here is a child who for whatever reason hates others, but really hates herself, and doesn’t know what to do about it. Many of us have “been there, done that”, with such a family member. It is not fun to be in it alone….
The young lady will go back to the place she wanted to be in the first place, a public school, but that isn’t going to solve her problem, and the public school knows it: but they don’t have the option of the private school. That’s what “public school” is about: serving public needs.
Luckily, in our particular town, and in most towns, there exist an array of services to spring into action if needed. I don’t need to recite them.
But as a parent, and as a school person, and involved community member, I know there are assorted persons, agencies, groups, most funded by tax dollars in some form or another, most only vaguely known to me, who are there to intervene, and hopefully move the troubled adolescents ME into a healthier perspective. WE are in this business of life together, and WE cannot do it alone.
None of us can control the destructive behaviors of this youngster and the persons of all ages and relationships around her who enable her, but we can help society be ready to help her out, whatever happens.
And hopefully in a few years, she’ll be a functioning adult, maybe even acknowledging what she did, back then, without having experienced too much long-term damage.
So, why the word, “Tea” at the end of the subject? And “A(De)”?
We are experiencing plenty of stupid “ME” behavior amongst the people too many of us have elected to make policy for this country. The folks whose only priority is their priority, whatever that priority is. In fact, too many of us are completely oriented to ME thinking: what’s good for ME, NOW.
Not you? Think about it.
We go, now, into the serious times of the “sequester” that most of us have forgotten about, since it hasn’t, so far, affected us directly.
But this fall, and next year in particular, the “chickens will come home to roost”, and the kind of services our troubled adolescent might need, might not be available.
For a good ongoing briefing, much longer, about the actions in Washington, I recommend following Just Above Above Sunset, free, daily, the most recent number here.