Lent and Trayvon: Wrong Is Wrong — Who Hurts?

The backlash has begun … or continues, maybe. In response to the Trayvon Martin shooting and all the ruckus that has ensued in the media, conservatives and White supremacists are showing their wounds — or perceived wounds. The Huffington Post reports this morning that some conservative columnist wrote a response to the idea that Black parents have to talk to their kids about how to behave so as not to get shot by saying what he “has to” tell his (White) kids about not getting shot by Blacks. In addition to this, some White supremacist organization is “patrolling” the streets of Sanford, Florida to “prevent” race riots from happening. Their stated reason is something like “Al Sharpton gets to do it. Why can’t we?”.

Also, this week, NBC has fired the man who seemingly edited the original 911 call and seemingly started the whole thing.The person who covered the editorial for the Huffington Post responded by explaining why the article is “racist” and saying that the man’s experience isn’t enough to have him ranting like this.

So let’s get down to facts — or at least my opinion of them.

1) Trayvon’s name is apparently spelled with a “Y”. I have spelled it without one since this whole thing began. I checked it in a couple of sources when I first wrote about it. I’ve seen it spelled both ways, but it seems to be spelled with a “y”. I was wrong, I guess. Still, if that’s the biggest mistake I make here, I’m ok with that. Should his parents ever read this and be upset because I mis-spelled their son’s same, I apologize. Having seen my name mis-spelled since forever I know that it’s kind of depressing. To those who say that I shouldn’t claim to speak for someone whose name I can’t even spell correctly, there might be some merit to that statement, but I have come down on the side of trying to understand the whole scenario, and that’s where I hope my post is different.

2) Yes, NBC’s editor caused a furor with his (or her) decision to put out the tape edited this way. He (or she) deserved to be fired.

3) Based on the article the conservative man wrote, there are apparently times when his life was threatened by Black folk at an amusement park. This is real, and for the reviewer to discount it is to say he shouldn’t complain because his “near-death experience” wasn’t scary enough or bad enough or difficult enough. Assuming that’s true, blaming him for being a victim on that day is wrong. Blaming the victim is always wrong.  It just is. The reviewer had no right to discount the conservative man’s experience.  It is in discounting people’s experience that we keep hate alive. By telling people they shouldn’t feel that way, we traumatize them, and it explodes later — in this case, on the internet.

3) Apparently, both Travon and Zimmerman felt afraid of the other and one of them is dead, the other injured. Irrational fear is not our friend. Rational fear might be good for us, but if we fight others because of it, there’s the chance that people will die.

4) I would be happy to arrest Trayvon for assault and Zimmerman for murder, and let the legal authorities sort this whole thing out, but that apparently isn’t going to happen — and can’t now, at least in part.

5) Young Mr. Martin’s injuries seem worse than the older Mr. Zimmerman in that he’s dead. Martin didn’t carry a weapon, let alone a gun, but Mr. Zimmerman didn’t know that, and didn’t bother to find out. He assumed that he was in danger, when he apparently wasn’t.  If the legal test of danger is “feeling unsafe”, we might have a problem here. If the legal test of danger is “actually is dangerous” or “reasonably perceived to be dangerous”, then we  have less of one, and Mr. Zimmerman should be in jail.  Martin was not — by any reasonable standard — a danger to Mr. Zimmerman, at least originally. Zimmerman was, by reason of having a gun and perceiving threats where there weren’t any, a danger to Martin.

6) The White supremacist group that is protecting against race riots is also perceiving a threat where there apparently isn’t any. In all of the marches, all of the comments, all of the youth movements about this case, I haven’t heard of one race riot. There are no burning cities. There are no calls for military to comb the streets at night by the government. In short, people with a real history of violence are saying they’re afraid of people with no call for violence. We call that “projection” in the clinical setting — I hate you, so I fear that you hate me. In the political world, we call it “posturing” or “bullying”. It’s the same logic that has Wall Street feeling scared when people say — in some non-violent way — that it hurt to have their house taken away from them. The people who took their house say “they hate us, “they are violent”,  ”they should be put in jail” and “they are being unfair to us“. Yes, there’s violence. Yes, there’s hate. Yes, somebody should be put in jail. Yes, somebody is being unfair. It’s not, however, the person sitting in the park or marching in the street. Deep down, everybody knows this. The Wall Street people know this consciously or unconsciously. The people in the park know this consciously.

During the period from Good Friday to Easter we see what happens when this trend is taken to it’s logical extreme. People arrest and kill an innocent man while all-the-time claiming he’s the scary one.  And, in fact, I’m sure Jesus was scary to the powers-that-be. That doesn’t mean there was anything to be afraid of. The most violent thing the gospels record Jesus doing is wrecking the selling area of the Temple. I’m sure that was a pretty scary thing if you were at the Temple.  Once, he also killed a fig tree by staring at it.  Thirty three years of life, and he has one bad day and one mean moment. Where does he end up? Jesus is whipped, beaten, stripped, jabbed in the side with a spear, and given vinegar on a stick.

On the other side of the coin, there are people who live a lot longer, make their money by stealing from the poor, keeping widows at bay with the laws they set up, trample on people’s lives, let alone their freedom. They have a bad day once at Temple or are anguished by the things they do during the day for the Roman military and they put up a public fuss because they feel threatened by a man who says he’s the king of the Jews but  has no army. Should Jesus have destroyed the money-changer’s business place? Probably not. Was it scary to be there when he did? Yup. probably.

In the long run, looking back on it, maybe the wrong people won on the Good Friday. Maybe the “victims” of the day weren’t the real victim. Maybe they were just bullies. In any case, next time Jesus visits, who do you think he’s going to understand best and sympathize with? And who is he going to have the harder time forgiving?

Are there people in the park who bought houses they couldn’t afford? Possibly. If there are, they know this as well, but they are loudly protesting that the banks hate them. Are they wrong to be complaining? Yes. Do they know this? Yes.  The more they feel guilty, the louder they yell. The inverse of that is not necessarily true. Just because someone’s yelling loudly doesn’t mean they’re guilty of something. They could just be in a lot of pain.  Guilty people who yell, though, yell loudly.

7) Guilty people yelling loudly. Bullies yell loudly, to squash their victim’s voice.  They do so because it works… for a while. Then it really doesn’t. Buried pain comes back louder than it did before it was suppressed. The fact of the matter is that the KKK- type people are right — there could be race riots. People have the right to be really mad about their hurts and having your son be dead is a pretty major hurt. But they haven’t rioted because they only want justice.  They don’t want revenge.  If Trayvon’s parents — and the whole African-American community — doesn’t get justice, if it festers and they keep quiet about the loss of this child — this thing will take on a life of its own for everybody. White Racists will worry more about The Truth coming out. Victims will want The Truth to come out and  will act in ridiculous ways to make sure it does.

So here’s the thing: People are hurt on both sides of this issue. Let everyone have the justice they deserve in the measure that they deserve it, not based on volume, not based on irrational fear, but based on truth. Then let’s see who the real victims are. We’ll see if the system works, we’ll see if racism exists. We’ll see if life’s consequences get unjustly applied.  But let’s get real justice for all.

Peace,

 

John

Bedford Falls Is The 99%, Faith Is A Choice: Christmas Movie Reviews

In the few hours I had yesterday to relax post-gift explosion, post paperwork, and post a really good dinner, the family and I watched two movies: one of my favorites of all time (“It’s A Wonderful Life”) and an over-the-top Spielberg animation movie (“The Polar Express”).  I was in one of those philosophical moods — not exactly sleep deprived but not all bright and cheery either. Anyway, these are my thoughts.

It began with The Polar Express — a movie I had seen in 3D with the kids when it first came out. A warning — NEVER bring little kids to see this movie in 3d with full-sense-around sound. When the train drives over your head, it looks, sounds, and scares the life out of you as though it were real.  Try holding a shaking while YOUR heart-rate is still above normal and see how fun it is.

At home, on our TV screen at least, the movie takes on a gentler tone, and becomes a movie about — of all things — faith.  The beginning of the movie features two different boys struggling with the same question: Do I believe and get on the train or do I let my disbelief get the best of me and let it go? One boy gets on after deciding “no” and changing his mind. The other one pretty much stays with his “no” answer until the others stop the train and wait for him. In a theme reminiscent of Walter Wangerin’s Ragman, the “believers” stop the train and go back and get the little boy for whom “Christmas just doesn’t work out”.  This boy doesn’t really make it to the big train cars, even after he gets on the train — because he doesn’t think he fits, and he doesn’t want to pretend he does, which is, of course, his choice.  The community of kids stop the train, go and get the kid, bring him hot chocolate and still he  doesn’t leave his car to check out the big train where all the fancy things happen.  But the community respects him enough, generally, to let him stay where he chooses and lets him come to them at his own pace. They bring him to the North Pole and he has to choose to move, to get out of the car he’s in, and to go see The Big Man Himself.

Whatever has happened to this child, it seems to be more than “I didn’t get a sled last year”. maybe it was the story on the news of the family that died in a Christmas fire, and maybe it was the look of the boy’s house in the movie that did it, but I was thinking real trauma from real life had taken away this boy’s reason to even hope for a better life.  This is the kind of thing that happens in people’s lives all the time. This (to use the psycholical term) “learned helplessness” requires extra care and work from an outsider to allow hope (and later choice) to happen. First comes rescue, then maybe daring to hope, then hope itself, then daring to try, then actual belief.

The other boy — the one called “Hero Boy” in the subtitles —  is too smart for belief. For him, much like Thomas in the gospels, only seeing will work to create belief and hope. But there is a part of him that wants to believe, just as I think Thomas did. Experience, “reality”, intellect, “growing up”, puberty, whatever it is, gets in the way and covers over his heart and his hope and his belief, but the spark of hope still burns somewhere within him until he’s left with, “what’s the worse thing that could happen if I believed?”.  Turns out you could die on a mountain railroad or a frozen over pond, or see a ghost hit his head on a low tunnel, or be stopped by elks, but — in the end — the North Pole actually does exist — and far more incredibly than anyone could have imagined.

As I watched, I thought of how much of faith is like that.  As we begin to remember the preposterous that we once knew , we begin to hope that castles and fairies and Santa and a beautiful reality  exists somewhere. We know too well that life makes sense most of the time. Still, love and hope and the Creator of it all aren’t always sensible — they’re extravagant and real.  So first, we get on the train because we woke up, then because we could escape the cold and get comfortable, then for some period of time, things get dangerous as reality itself gets unhinged for the smart person and the depressed one, the black one, the white one, the male and female, the courageous and the disliked know-it-all.  And if you stay on the journey long enough you get to see something like what you’ve dreamed about — only way, way better in ways and degrees you couldn’t even imagine. This is what faith promises, or hopes for, or believes in. It makes the crazy impossible train and the long walk through the snow to help others soooo worth it. What the boy was hoping for was a local town fair. What he gets is Disneyland, 6 Flags, and the Cathedral all in one. As Christians, we like to think the same way. Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, Muslims all (I think) look at faith the same way. So here’s the deal: you don’t have to get on the train. In fact,  if you get on because other people “made” you, you’re probably not going to enjoy it anyway.  But if you get on, and it’s even slightly your choice, I can promise you a pretty amazing ride to where ever that thing goes.

The second movie we watched is the classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Though it is (horrors!) in black and white, and clearly set in another time, it looks so familiar where it shouldn’t  be. Further, critics have called it “hokum” in the past and talked about “Capra corn” and they — as snivelling cynics often do — miss the point. When we as a society lose track of this, we are in serious trouble, which is how we got to here.

Clearly, the movie is about a man (Jimmy Stewart)’s innner demons and his struggle to have a better life away from the people around him whom he doesn’t exactly fit with, but is called to nonetheless. Yes, the themes of “one man’s life impacts those around him” and “life is worth living” are great ones that the movie conveys extremely well, but that’s not what I want to focus on here.

The thing that makes the movie both great and “corny” to cynics is it’s realism. In the town of Bedford Falls, we have the taxi driver and the cop, the librarian and the banker. We also have the immigrant in the slums, the factory worker, and the factory owner who’s lucky to “get in on the ground floor”. We have the forgetful and the deaf, the High School hero and the supposedly “loose woman”. We have the drunken and the sorrowful who either escape their fate or don’t. We have children who catch colds while playing and others who are lucky to survive them. There are people simply trying to get by (George Bailey and his family), there are people making progress for their family (like Martini’s new house), and there are people in Mr. Potter’s slum — and they all live together in the world that is Bedford Falls. All of these folks make up what we now refer to as “the 99%” while one man — Mr. Potter — owns nearly all of it and wants it all.

He is the man at the draft board who determines who will live and who will die, just as he is the man who sets the rents and rates at home that could determine who lives or dies. He is the man who owns it all, but has nothing. He’s the man who makes the Congressman wait til he’s done.  He’s the man that calls the police over one act of bad banking while he lives his entire life acting unethically. As Jimmy Stewart’s George says in a time of economic crisis, “Potter’s not selling, he’s buying”. What he’s trying to buy is control over their “measly little riff-raff” lives while they “do most of the working and living and dying in [that] town”. As George says, “Isn’t it fair that they should do that with a roof over their heads?”

Those of us who are like George have every right to want to leave all of that working and living and dying behind and live out our dreams. We have every right to live out our destinies. But if we leave behind the rest of Bedford Falls behind mentally, if we forget that the drunk and the floozie are connected to us, if we forget that the world is made up of all those other people — with their shades of good and bad, smart and not-so-smart, we leave the world of Bedford Falls to people like Mr. Potter.

Pretty soon, children are dying from “regular life” accidents like kids playing on the pond, houses are taken away or never built, and corruption reigns in the streets — all of the things that could have been prevented if we had cared enough to know both the Sam Wainrights and the Mr. Gowers of the world and formed a bridge between them in our community, both Bert the cop and Violet the “it” girl.

The picture of community in “It’s A Wonderful Life” is what America used to be — a connected mass of one life touching and building up another. It’s a tough life, as much as it is a wonderful one, but people make progress because they know and care about each other, and they protect each other from the Mr. Potters of the world, who care nothing about them and threaten\ “offer” to dislodge people from each other.

Bedford Falls is the Social Contract in action, the psychology of community vs. our fear of co-dependence. It is the best of America for the most people, but it isn’t always fair for the George Baileys out there. It’s so unfair at times that we may want to die, but in the end it’s that very community that saves us.

We need to protect ourselves from the Mr. Potters of the world who take but give little back, who divide and conquer, who remove the very thing that keeps us going after a hard day working and living and dying. But we need to do that by accepting that George Bailey has a job to do right here at home in Bedford Falls.

Peace,

 

John

 

 

 

I Finally Get It! — Newt (and Others) are 10!

I was reading something in the Huffington Post the other day and it said that Newt Gingrich had called President Obama “something childish and unprofessional”. I couldn’t imagine what it was, so I did a little research and apparently Mr. Gingrich had called Mr. Obama “chicken”! I thought to myself, “What is he, ten years old?”. Then it struck me, that’s exactly it! Remember the cute, pudgy in grammar school who called kids “chicken”? Newt Gingrich is that guy — all not grown up!  He’s Dennis the Menace! He’s Huck Finn! He’s one of the Little Rascals!  And that’s what we like about him: he says the things we would have said when we were young and innocent and boyish. I’m clear on that “boyish” thing, by the way. I have a 10 year old girl and she’d never call someone “chicken”. She might taunt someone another way or about another thing, but the fact is that saying “you’re not aggressive enough” would never enter her mind.

But back to Newt: honestly, I think I’m on to something here. He plays up the boyish charm and we think he’s cute, somehow. He’s a rascal, a rabscallion, he’s impish… and he’s as simple about politics  around him as a ten-year-old.  When he says something goofy, we all think “He’s just being honest”… As honest as any ten year old ever was.

There’s a reason, though, why we don’t let ten year old boys become President. A slingshot is not foreign policy. Putting frogs down a girls dress isn’t the way to handle say, Hillary Clinton, or the dissident who won a Nobel prize. Laughing at nerds doesn’t make for a good economic strategy. We all want to remember innocence and misunderstanding as “those cute things kids say”.  I, anyway, like innocence as much as anybody. But misunderstanding and, say, nukes, don’t bode well for the world. The Kid in all of us is cute, because his (or her) world is the playground. How much damage can they do there? Only a playground’s worth. Then the big people take over, because Junior could get run over by a car.

I wonder, as I think about it, whether Sarah Palin wouldn’t think it were cute if a ten-year-old put a frog down her dress. I think she’d think it was cute in the same way building a tree fort that said “No Girls Allowed!” was.  She’d giggle and think, “He can’t possibly mean that!” but he would, because — at least in my childhood — ten-year-old boys thought girls were “yucky” and “mushy” and stuff.

Bill O’Reilly has started (or maybe I just noticed) with the same thing, taunting Mitt Romney saying, “Are you a tough guy?” . I wonder how many other professional Right-Wingers think the same way. President Obama looks way too serious to be playing with those boys. He acts like a Big Person if you’re ten.

By the way, I hear that Mr. Gingrich is a very smart man — an intellectual of sorts — or he fancies himself one. I have no doubt that Bill O’Reilly, as much as I dislike his opinions, is also very smart. He certainly makes more money than I do for what he does, and that kind of success requires a certain intelligence. Sarah Palin was governor of a state, for goodness sake. Clearly, she’s got something go on in her head. But I can picture her putting on lipstick in front a “big girl” mirror wearing her mother’s fake pearls, just to see what it’s like.

The problem comes when the 10 year old walks around in a however-old-he-is body. One doesn’t really expect an adult to leave his wife while she’s got cancer because the girl around the corner likes him. One doesn’t really expect an adult to quit her job just because the job gets hard or because she’d like to do something else now. I hope Bill O’Reilly’s never stuck his tongue out at a guest, but — if I’m right — I wouldn’t be surprised. This is  where the scandals come in — when that cute little child is asked to always Act Like An Adult, which is the job of the President. If they can pass that test, then they can qualify to run.

I don’t mean to pick on Gingrich, Palin, O’Reilly (or Limbaugh or Bachmann or Herman Cain) because that’s who they are. What I’m fascinated by is that we, as Americans, take such delight in them.  We are (or maybe it’s just the media) “hooked” by them somehow. Maybe they represent a simpler time, or “pure” innocence. They represent something in us that we genuinely liked — at ten. They represent something we miss in ourselves now. Nor do I mean to just pick on conservatives — I bet Bill Clinton’s got a little of that boyish charm thing going, too, but look at his scandal. And Clinton was a Rhodes scholar, so he’s no intellectual slouch either.  The idea, though, that “boys will be boys” — and I mean real boys — is an acceptable idea to some people in politics is an idea worth considering, but it’s one that will get us in trouble once we’re called to deal with adult issues.

 

Peace,

 

John

 

 

The Ten Commandments and Politics

I made the mistake of listening to talk radio today in my car — left-wing talk radio (WHMP in Northampton, Mass), but talk radio nonetheless. They were discussing the Republican candidates and the most recent charge against Herman Cain, why it means this for Newt Gingrich, or that for Mitt Romney, and why this candidate or that candidate should or shouldn’t be included.  They were discussing whether Cain’s private life was the problem or whether his allegedly lying was the problem, and so on and so forth and I thought to myself, ” Does it really have to be this complex? Isn’t there some other way to decide who’s a good choice for President or elected official.  Taking really basic guidelines, here’s my proposal.

From Exodus 20: 2 -

² “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  –  The elected person should not put their constituents into any type of slavery — emotional slavery of any sort —  or literal  slavery (i.e. you work very hard for someone else for no money at all).

³ “You shall have no other gods before  me. – The elected person should not take an oath to any person, ideology, (maybe party?) other than serving their constituents and/or the country as a whole.  This means no pledges to “Never Raise Taxes”, no pledges like the Contract for America, no pledges to the NRA or PETA or anybody.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or worship them” —    The elected person should not pretend they are something they are not. They shouldn’t craft an image of themselves as pure in any form that they are not. They shouldn’t pay anyone else to craft an image of themselves as pure in any form that they are not. They should let someone else craft an image of themselves as “pure” in any form that they are not.  This means no “spin doctors”, no PACs, maybe no soundbites.

⁷ “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. — The elected person should not ever claim to be doing things because God told them to, unless it’s actually true. In that case, the person should be tested for sanity. If they are sane, and they’re telling the truth that God said it, they should use God’s name.  If it can’t meet both of those rules, it’s blasphemy for religious types and just plain a lie for secular ones.

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. ¹¹ For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. — The elected official should take time off to reflect as often as necessary.

¹² “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you”.  – The elected official should remember their history, but also honor their forebears by being able to meet the challenges of their own day. I want my kids to be respectful of me, but I also want them to be themselves. Let’s take that to the national level.

¹³ “You shall not murder” — Murderers need not apply, in general. People who like war should not be elected. The term often used is “kill”, but the actual term is murder – planned killing. War is planned killing in a larger scale. I understand that countries need to do things at times in self-defense. But war as “conquering” — nope.

¹⁴ “You shall not commit adultery” — straightforward.

¹⁵ “You shall not steal” — in any way , from anybody — especially your constituents. In addition, maybe no lobbying after you’ve left office.

¹⁶ “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. — also straightforward — but so far from the debates and the ads.

¹⁷ “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” — The elected person should not taking what’s not theirs, either from countries or from other people. They shouldn’t  abuse their power just because they have it. No sexual harassment, then.

The text continues:

¹⁸ When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance ¹⁹ and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

²⁰ Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

²¹ The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

We are in such a mess right now, because we are so far from where we should be. Yeah, we’re afraid of God, and yeah there’s a thick cloud between us and God — not because we created that cloud, that thick wall between us and the way things should be. Our government ought to be afraid of a truly just God if this is where we’re at.

By the way — last thing.  Because it’s only my opinion, nobody should ever use this as some kind of litmus test. It’s not anything else to pledge allegiance to.  But it’s a place to start.

Peace,

John

Some Demands

People keep asking me “What does Occupy Wall Street want exactly?”  The various news organizations say that OWS won’t be taken seriously until they have a list of demands. I don’t know anybody actually involved in “Occupy” (fill in the blank. I saw the tents in Hartford from the highway yesterday, and I read the actual liberal press, so I know a little bit, but that doesn’t qualify me to speak for them.  I don’t know what their demands are, but I can say what I would demand if I ran a movement and it will include some of the other things I read in other people’s columns. So here they are:

1)  I never want to hear that “The Golden Rule” is “He(she) who has the gold makes the rules” again. The Golden Rule is “love your neighbor as yourself” or “Do unto others as you’d like done to you”.  There’s a big difference between the two and it’s important.

2) There should be a maximum amount an individual can have — and a minimum people have for working.  The minimum should include food, clothing, and shelter, and real access to  necessary medical care and access to medically (psychologically, as well)  necessary medicines, as well. The maximum should be “when you don’t know how much you have or care how much you spend, it’s too much”.  If it’s not contributing to your welfare, you don’t need it.

3) No one should be removed from their home if the bank or institution that is doing the evicting can’t prove that they own the house.

4) The maximum fee for an overdraft should not be more than the actual overdraft and what it actually costs to process it.  That processing cost  should be published — and monitored by the government, so that the banks don’t say “it costs a thousand dollars” when it actually costs a nickel.

5) Adding on daily fees or interest to money owed (overdraft fees, taxes, child support) to an institution should not be legal. If we already know a person doesn’t have the money, adding more to what they owe is going to discourage their payment. Let’s stop that.

6) Banks should create jobs by hiring tellers at least  as often as they install an ATM. Any fee the bank would have charged for the transaction can pay their salary and insurance costs.

7) Immediate repeal by the president and congress of the “Citizens United” decision of the Supreme Court in whatever way that needs to happen.

8) Further legal description of “usury” (exorbitant interest on a loan) and stiff penalties for committing it.

9) No war\”police action”\ military attack should be contemplated without a way to pay for it in advance.  The US can defend itself without worrying about money, but it cannot attack others without doing so. “Defense” stays on these shores. “Attack” takes place elsewhere.

10) All people who don’t complete High School should be trained to — and expected to — do a craft\work for the greater good. In exchange, they should be given enough income to have food, clothing, shelter and medical care.  If this seems too much, consider that it costs $80,000 per year to keep them in jail.  Two jobs to avoid one incarceration seems a better option for people who could go into gangs, or feel they have the right to steal for a living.

11) No one should be given a house loan without documentation of income.

12) Planning to make money on a planet that doesn’t exist is absurd. All economic growth must be environmentally sustainable.

13) White collar crime should carry the same penalties as blue-collar crime.  If a person steals $1,000 worth of material and is given a 5 year sentence, for instance, then a a man who defrauded a million dollars should be given the same ratio of value to years served — a 5,000 year sentence.  Laws should be equally enforced across socio-economic strata.

14) All communities in America should have fire equipment, police,  rescue teams and Post Offices. They don’t need to be much, but they need to be enough to service the needs of the community. Perhaps people who drop out of school should become volunteer fire-fighters in exchange for their living wage.

15)  All loans should be given by local banks and people giving loans should know the people they are giving the loans to.

I f we did all of this, things would be closer to equitable. It’s assumed that we’ll never get it totally right, but it’s a start.

Peace,

John

Democracy Makes A Comeback But the Vision Never Left

I have been struggling with what to say about President Obama lately. His jobs bill is a very good thing on a practical level. His desire to tax the rich at a fair rate is too slow in coming, but also a great thing that starts to address the issue of fairness. In short, the President has become — in the last two months — the man I voted for four years ago.  What he doesn’t get, however, is why I voted for him in the first place — which leads me to be cynical now and for the foreseeable future.  Jon Stewart was right , “Campaign Obama is back”.  The problem is that I believe he’s only doing this now because he’s campaigning again.  What he’s done is target the biggest people who will vote for him — unions, teachers, etc.  and attempted to give them jobs, which he believes will be enough to restart the economy. I don’t know if it will be enough, but it’s a good start. As a matter of “what he’s done in 8 years” if he’s re-elected, he may well be remembered as a great president. Ending the war in Iraq, ending it in Afghanistan, ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, getting more general acceptance of gays and lesbians,  getting more Americans health coverage, bringing Detroit and the Auto industry back from the brink — these are all good things — very good things. But none of those things are what I elected him for, really.

What I elected him for is what’s happening in the streets of New York — and now elsewhere.  The reason that I voted for Obama was that he was a great speaker, a leader, a man with a vision of America who — because of his vision, told us that we could have a vision. I didn’t vote for specific policies. I voted for vision — a dream of who we could be.  I voted for a man who would make it fashionable to engage in politics again — in our cities and towns, in our states, and in our country.  I voted for a man who could help us remember what being citizens meant and what democracy felt like.

Years ago, when Elizabeth Horton-Scheff was leaving the Connecticut Conference staff of the United Church of Christ, I said about her that she was like a motorboat whose wake left progress easier for those who followed with their own dreams. That is what I voted for Obama for.  For years, there had been a sense that we were choosing between the lesser of two (of ten) evils when voting. In 2008, I actually felt like we had voted for the best man America had to offer.  We knew quality when we saw it, and we were going to exercise our right to choose for our own best interests.  It wasn’t about him, but about us. We had a vision of fairness and goodness and being involved in things that mattered  and we finally found somebody who could take us towards  it.

After years of wanting one thing (peace, truth, justice) and getting the opposite (war, lies, and division) from elected officials that I didn’t expect much from in the first place, here was a chance to say to future generations “this is what it’s like when a bunch of people agree. See how great it is to be an American? Now go out and be one!” It was the fact that my $5.00 donation counted for something along with millions of other $5.00 donations that gave me hope — for a change.

But the Supreme Court made it nearly impossible that fairness could win the day when they said “corporations are people”.  Then the Tea Party arrived and started yelling insanely. Then Congress fought every day with the President. “Yes, We Can” became “Oh no, you don’t!” And — when the President had the chance to be visionary, he backed down time and again. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. People couldn’t get a job, couldn’t afford a house, and now have to choose between buying  food and paying their bills in more and more places. Obama’s tax on private jet planes fell on deaf ears. Seriously?  Do a lot of people out there have private jet planes?  There weren’t more people who could agree to tax them than had them? Seriously?

That’s where we were two months ago — people in their homes, watching their democracy do nothing, not represent them, making things worse.  We still knew where the problems were, and what they were, but we had learned we were helpless to do anything. We watched as democracy took root in the middle east (without a war!) while our own country slipped away.  The economic recession reflected our psychological depression.

Then something weird happened –Canadians got involved — and not even political Canadians — artistic ones! Adbusters magazine is one I see every once in awhile. It is made by artists and it parodies and twists the current vision of  ”Capitalism for all!” and “Buying stuff makes us happy!” enough to make us think about what we do and who we are.  And somehow, maybe because they’d seen the protests\occupation fo the Wisconsin state capitol, Adbusters came up with this idea — using twitter and other things — “# Occupy Wall Street!” — and frustrated people did.

Then “The Establishment” refused to cover it.  Washington didn’t talk about it, the media didn’t talk about it and — since image is supposed to be everything — it was supposed to fade away. But the vision of a fair America, where things worked for most folks, kept creating more frustration with the way things are.  The Spark was there and it didn’t simply extinguish itself. More people heard about it and decided to get active. Still no mass coverage. People who are sick of not being heard yell louder — it’s a natural human tendency.  So more people came out and got support. Then 700 people got arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. That was too big to ignore.  When representative democracy no longer works, the people will represent themselves.  This past weekend, non-violent protests like Occupy Wall Street popped up around the country.  The New York Times reports that “these people are in it for the long haul”.  NPR reported on the arrests of people on the bridge. Some transit workers refused to help arrest their fellow citizens. Citizens are not dousing the Spark of Democracy anymore and it is a good thing.

People are once again active in their own lives, active in their own political system, active in their own economic lives. To say it is a political  ”movement” right now would be to say that there’s a leader and specific goals — and there aren’t.  Even Adbusters just wanted to see what would happen, I think.  To say that it is a spiritual movement, however, would be right on the mark. It is “an outward and visible sign” of our desire for fairness, housing, a chance to have work count for something, a chance for one-person-one-vote.  FOX can’t blame it on President Obama, because neither of them matter here. This is not about them, any more than Obama’s election was about him.  This is about us, with hope, demanding change.

How’s that hopey-changey thing working for us? We don’t know yet, but it feels a lot better than no hope and no change.

Peace,

 

John

Simply Against Legalizing Marijuana

I understand from news sources that there is a push toward legalizing marijuana which recently made it to “suggestions for the White House” or something like that. I have to say that I don’t understand all the details, but I am NOT for legalizing pot, not for taxing it for revenue, not for saying it’s good in any way — with the possible medical use of cancer patients and patients with other diseases that make a person “waste away” like HIV.

I was one of those voters who didn’t want to decriminalize pot, because I thought it was the first step toward legalizing it, regardless of what the police or sheriff on the radio said. Sure enough, here we are.  That said, I’m actually more in favor of decriminalizing pot than I used to be, because there are some realities I didn’t know about.  For example, if possession was a felony and you were found guilty, it was harder — if not impossible –to get student loans.  I never knew there was a connection between student loans and drug convictions, but apparently there is.  Decriminalizing it meant that such nonsense changed. Decriminalization also meant that people didn’t go away to prison forever for smoking a joint or two or even ten.  The cost of keeping somebody in prison is a ridiculous amount of money per year, and there so many better things to be done with that money — plus putting people who aren’t violent in with violent criminals makes more violent criminals and more traumatized people.  The legal system and the punishment system in this country are so messed up right now that the fewer people we can put in jail, the better off we are as a society.  Let people who are really psychopaths or violent go there, but other than that,  keep people unlike that away.  But that’s a whole other blog.

Back to marijuana — here are my reasons against it.

1) Today’s marijuana is “not your father’s marijuana”. It is 1o times (at least) more potent than it used to be.  It is far, far from the “innocuous little weed” my teacher in college talked about smoking.

2) It is way more expensive than it used to be — by factors I can’t even imagine. My clients tell me about the wide variety of pot that’s out there — from “dirt” which probably was your father’s pot — to “cush” which costs some incredible amount – hundreds of dollars — for a bud of marijuana.  The people I know who smoke marijuana don’t have that kind of money and they don’t have any time to waste blotto out of their mind.  Between spending a lot for it, and making nothing while using it, marijuana use destroys any financial stability a person might have.  We don’t need another way to keep the poor  poor.

3) It is addictive. Because teachers years ago spoke of it as “innocuous”, and because nobody I knew in the day had to have any, I assumed it wasn’t addictive. Back in the day, I knew lots of  ”stoners” and “burnies” who lost a lot of brain cells and thinking capacity smoking all the time, but not of them got violent if they didn’t have it. About six years ago, I met my first guy who was “addicted to marijuana” and it took a bit to get used to his existence. I doubted that he was actually addicted, but if he thought so, that was good enough for me. It was his life, and his experience. Recently, I read an article that talks about withdrawal symptoms from marijuana, so  the science is there.

Besides that, I have plenty of experience with pot addicts. Since then, I have come to know people who truly are addicted to pot, who get violent and aggressive and act like jerks to their families and children because they don’t have pot.  I knew a man on disability who received $700 or so per month, spent $400+ per month on pot and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t able to pay his bills! The same man gets really, really nasty to his wife and deprives his child of food because of it — and I know many of “him” in various locations, with various families.

4) People like the man in #3  can’t tell the difference between “decriminalized” and “legal”. The day  that Massachusuetts voted to change the law and make it a $100 fine for possession of less than an an ounce of marijuana, — that very day I had clients telling me it was legal.  People who think that way already will use any excuse to use a drug. “Not being punished harshly” is the same thing as saying  ”its good” ! If we make it legal, people will start saying it’s good for you — aka “healthy” – to smoke pot.

Again, there are all kinds of subtleties and plans about tax money and lower costs for pot, etc. Those things would require a lot more than I’m ready to — or capable of — discussing.  But just purely on a “is marijuana good or bad” and “should society condone it?” basis, I see nothing good coming of the legalization of pot.  People don’t need another way to die — smoking pot destroys the lungs faster than cigarettes. People don’t need another way to get poor — or another tax for poor people to pay like beer and cigarette taxes. Children and families don’t need another way to be denied what they need.  Being stoned out of your mind is not a way to live — it’s a way to avoid living.

I welcome responsible opposing viewpoints, but — for now, and for simplicity’s sake — I’m against legalizing marijuana.

Peace,

John

Signs of Hope

I woke up this morning to an NPR (maybe only in CT NPR) story about a new state law that gives restaurant workers and others paid sick days.  The story continued that polls said that there was bipartisan support for the bill (among citizens) and that people who voted against it were viewed  ”unfavorably”.

Yesterday, the Hartford Courant had an article about the riots in Britain that said there was widespread problems with morality there. It was not just that the vandals and looters showed no respect for property or others, as the Prime Minister had said recently. Both a conservative paper and a liberal paper there had written op-ed pieces that said there were problems everywhere — at all class levels, at all ages, across color lines, etc.  In short, these papers said that there had been moral bankruptcy at all levels of society and it wasn’t working well for anybody anymore. “Perhaps”, said one of the articles, “the era of ‘Greed is Good’ is over”.

In more national news,  more than a thousand people, including friends of our family, Tom Carr and Judy Allen have been arrested protesting the Obama administrations decision to send tar sands (a controversial method of getting oil) to Texas from Canada. Likewise, environmentalists who are upset that Mr. Obama decided to wait a few more years to lower emissions standards. Robert Redford, who supported Obama, is now re-thinking that decision based on environmental concerns.  Obama apparently decided to stall the emissions changes to help businesses.  Regardless of how you see Obama’s decision, there are real changes in the wind.

People are starting to think of others. People are starting to look at themselves and take responsibility for their own failings. People are starting to  realize that, politicians in Washington are not the end-all-be-all of getting things done.  In a year when every known catastrophe has happened in some place we don’t normally expect, people outside of Washington think there’s something wrong with the environment. Politics and economics and arguing who’s right/who’s wrong don’t much matter if we’re all dead or there’s not a planet to put industry on.  And in Washington itself, people are starting to demand that those who govern actually do something, rather than posturing about various issues.

It’s not just the actions that people are taking, it’s that people are taking action at all. They see that it’s up to them to make a difference rather than politicians doing it for them (even if, like me, they wish politicians would help). In addition to that, there seems to be an attitude change. Maybe enough people have become poor or unemployed now that they understand how hard life is for those who need assistance.  Maybe now, enough folks have compassion because they’ve been there. Maybe people are trusting their own experience more than what they’re told by people with a chance to make a dollar.  Whatever it is, these stories tell us we are caring more about the big things like each other or the planet, rather than little things like who wore the same dress or how much money Donald Trump is giving to his most recent wife.

I know that this is a random sampling of news and that things may actually be getting worse, but I like thinking there might be more to it.

Peace,

 

John

No Tax Freeze Without Representation!!!

From toady’s Huffington Post:

“On the Senate side, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) will serve on the commission, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced. Reps. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) will represent House Republicans, said Speaker John Boehner.

All six Republicans have signed a pledge to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform that they will not vote to raise taxes”.

Who the heck is Grover Norquist? Unless he’s elected, he shouldn’t have enough power to determine the fate of America. Again, as I said last week, elected officials who refuse to negotiate are not States-people, concerned with the welfare of their constituents or the country as a whole.  Trench warfare is not bipartisanship. Also, as I said last week, — like it or lump it —  Standard and Poors lowered our credit rating because they weren’t convinced that we could solve our debt crisis with the way things are between the parties. Forgetting whether their math is wrong, whether they have the right to do so or not, they have done so and they’ve named their reasons. Since then, the stock market has taken 3 massive hits (with one rebound good day in the middle). Once again, Republicans are saying in advance that they won’t negotiate and once again the stock market takes a hit. Are these people listening?

A recent poll said 60% of Americans think we should tax the rich. Grover Norquist thinks we shouldn’t and 3 Senators and 3 Representatives are listening to him. I assume Nordquist is rich, but I don’t know that. Whether he is or he isn’t, who the hell is he to shanghai my and everyone else’s democracy? Let him cast his vote like everybody else. Let him have one vote, like you, me and the person next door. I was slightly distressed when Labor spent a whole lot of money on ads in Wisconsin to oust people that needed to be ousted. But they are a whole organization, representing thousands — maybe millions — of people. They also fought over six seats.  Thousands of people trying to sway opinion for 6 votes — that’s democracy.  One man owning 6 representatives? That’s something alright, but it’s not democracy. And I don’t want to hear that his voice is part of a grassroots movement to lower taxes. I suspect the only part of Grover Nordquist that touches grassroots is the heel of his shoe!  And a movement? That requires more than one person. 60% of people with a desire to tax the rich? That’s a movement.

Nor do I want to hear how this is “fair” under the phrase “no raising of taxes on anyone!”  I haven’t heard anybody arguing for tax increases on the middle class or the poor — not Obama, not a Democrat or a Republican or a Socialist. What everyone is arguing about is tax increases on the richest of the rich.  I’m not for it myself, but if 60% of America — heck, even 51% of America wanted no tax increases on the rich, I’d have to settle for that, because it would be the way we do things in America — it would be a representative democracy — the kind of thing our fore-fathers fought for, the kind of thing our Constitution says we have, the kind of thing we’re trying to export as ideal around the world.  It’s not perfect and it’s messy, but it’s us at our best!

If Nordquist wants to own a country, let him buy a little island somewhere — and let him move there! Meanwhile the rest of us will hem and haw, argue, and fight and come up with solutions for our lives.  When did Nordquist become king in a country where we already have a system of government? And why are the Republicans  letting him? As strange as it sounds, we have gotten to the point where the new call to our Patriots should be “No Tax Freeze Without Representation!”, because the only people who don’t want a tax on the rich are … some of the rich.  Even some of the rich think we should tax the rich.

If Nordquist — whoever he is — can have his pledge for  ”Americans for Tax Reform”, then I can have my “Americans for Taxing the Rich and Supporting Everyone Else” pledge. Can I have some bi-partisan support for that?  How about multi-partisan support? How about no parties involved support for that?  Can I get a witness??!!

In America, if Grover Norquist can have one, so can I — and so can you.

Peace,

 

John

 

Why The Stock Market Dropped

There are going to be complicated understandings in the news about why the Stock Market had such a major drop.  They include a poor economy in the U.S. (but we already had one before this), a debt crisis in Europe (ditto, though maybe it got a little worse), or some combination of the two. Then there are the “daily horoscope” explanations of why — “the market crashed because sparrows flew from Wisconsin, thus ruining the Brazilian Rainforest yesterday”.

At least as understandable as any one of them is this: The economy isn’t stable because our government isn’t. After months of wrangling and a near-stoppage re: the debt ceiling, we thought for a minute that it would be stable, but now we know that it’s not.  Immediately after the last round of arguing and a near-default, where everyone took a sigh of relief, the Repo-blicans proved that they were still not going to discuss things. The “Super-Committee” that’s supposed to put forth a budget plan by November will be composed of Republicans who will stick to the same “No Tax Increases!” plan that worked so well last time. John Boehner has said that they won’t even put somebody on the committee who will raise taxes on the richest of the rich.  That leaves a Super-Committee-Who-Won’t-Agree-On-Anything. The Dems will want to raise taxes to increase revenue and the Repos will refuse. Even if they come to another “compromise” like the last one, they will battle with their bravado until the last minute once again. And most of America (60% according to the polls I see) want a tax increase on the richest. That means that Dems will look dumb if they back down and Republicans think will look “weak” if they do. This is not the way to a compromise. If Dems harden their stance and Repos continue to stand their ground, by November, we will have … nothing.

Once again, the economy could go into some sort of spin because both parties won’t move at all, leaving a government that gets nothing done.  Even corporations need to know which way the wind blows. How can you predict earnings if you don’t know what the laws governing your item will be? How can you make plans not knowing if the economy looks like the Tea Party wants it or the Supposed Socialists want it? You can’t.  How are people going to have confidence in the economy if all they hear about is stagnation in the Capitol? If they don’t have confidence that their leaders can do anything, or that the economy will re-focus on jobs and such,  why would they buy anything?

It’s a no-win situation because our politicians want it to be a no-win situation for their “opponents”. “No” and “No” don’t add up to “Yes”. It doesn’t work that way.

So what to do? Write, call, yell at, protest, any politician who gets on the Committee  and says in advance ”I want a no-compromise compromise”.  Politicians used to be “Statesmen” and “Stateswomen” who knew the art of the deal, how to compromise, and understood that there’s a reason we have Branches of Government and two houses of Congress — because we need everyone’s input. I don’t remember anything in the Constitution saying anything about parties, though. Those we may not need. The woman whose view of life I most value, Virginia Satir, says that “if you can’t come up with at least three options, you’re not being creative enough”. We need States-people who are creative and can get things done, not partisans who are nay-sayers and don’t.

For people who want the economy to be stable, and investment, jobs, and profits to happen, the Repos are doing everything they can to make sure it won’t happen if it’s not their way. Help them find somebody who can flex. Tell them to avoid anyone who can’t or won’t.

Just a thought.

 

Peace,

 

John