I was about seven or eight, if memory serves, and my GranGran and I were walking across a parking lot through an early December snow when we heard the familiar ringing of the bell and saw the uniformed young lady standing beside the little red kettle. "Never pass by the Salvation Army," my grandfather said. "They do a lot of good for folks who are down and out, really poor. Always give them what you can, even if it's only a little." So he'd reach into his pocket and pull out a couple of wrinkled dollar bills, give me one, and we'd each put one into the pot. GranGran would tip his hat to the lady; she'd nod a thanks, and we'd be on our way.
Years later I'd relate that same story to my two daughters as we were walking across some snowy New England parking lot, reach into my pocket, pass out the dollars, or quarters, as I was able, and we'd give what we could. "They help the poor," I'd explain. "People who don't have enough to eat tonight, and maybe even their kids; people without a roof over their heads won't have to sleep out in the cold tonight because you cared enough to help out."
This is the background I bring to the annual controversy that pits the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community against the Salvation Army. A controversy that runs down a two-way street. You see, the Salvation Army is a very conservative Christian organization that firmly believes the LGBT lifestyle is contrary to the SA's interpretation of certain Scriptures. Naturally, the LGBT community holds the opposite view, and calls upon me to withhold my cash in protest.
I happen to have long advocated, in the various denominations I've served as minister, the full rights of inclusion for the LGBT community. And we've made a great deal of progress as witnessed by the Episcopal Church, of which I'm now proudly a full member, having been confirmed by the Bishop just a couple of weeks ago. A few years back the Episcopal Church elected Gene Robinson Bishop of New Hampshire. Bishop Robinson is openly gay. Quite a step forward. Progress is often slow. But progress is made.
Yet not every Episcopalian would agree with me. Every year at our annual gathering there is that vocal minority who will get up and rant and rave against ordaining anyone who isn't straight. No doubt it will be so again this year. Equally certain is that their anti-gay agenda will get voted down. Seems the controversy, like the poor, is destined to be always with us.
I think the Salvation Army's stance on LGBT is wrong. But I'm not going to withdraw my money any more than I would withdraw my money from my Episcopal Church. I've seen first hand the good the SA has done and continues to do each year. I don't agree with them on this issue, but if I pulled my pittance out of every organization I can find something to disagree about I'd end up never giving a dime to any charity. So I have to make choices. Or kids sleep in the car and pregnant mothers don't eat.
Change comes from courage within and pressure from without from those who disagree. So I will make my protest known, and encourage a more enlightened approach. Then, some day, probably before long, some long time member of the Salvation Army in good standing will come out of the closet and set off a bonfire of rethinking all the attendant issues. Never fails. So I choose the way of the loyal opposition. That feels like it has more integrity, for me anyway, than the I'll take my dollar and go home approach.
I want that hungry guy on the street corner to have a soup kitchen to go to tonight. And the mom and two kids some chickenshit bank foreclosed on and put out in the cold; I'd like them to have a shelter, and for the kids to get a couple presents this Christmas. I'm funny that way.
The Jawbone
Monday, December 19, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Swearing Preachers and the Hijacking of Democracy
"That," as my grandfather was fond of saying, "would make a preacher cuss." As a brief aside to those who have a rather shallow view of our profession, let me say this: If you ever meet a preacher who can't, when the situation warrants, string together a chain of profanities that would make the saltiest drunken sailor hang his head in crimson-faced shame---find another church. Come Sunday morning, only the swearing preachers have anything meaningful to say regarding the political and economic shit storm swirling around us.
In that intentionally irreverent spirit I will go my polling place tomorrow. I go for two reasons. One, voting gives me the right to bitch and generally raise hell about the hijacking of what used to be our democratic process. Two, this is a local, state house, election. What may be the last bastion of something remotely resembling democracy, although that too is disappearing.
My hope for local, state house elections is that they may not be quite as infected with corporate money. I remain idealist enough to still believe that there is, on the local level, at least a chance that a citizen can run for office on a very small budget and still have a chance to win. Rare. But it remains within the boundaries of possibility.
On the national level that is not the case. Here democracy is a thin veneer covering a completely corrupted system. Where is the democracy when both sides are bought and paid for by their corporate pimps? Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that allows companies like Bank of American and United Health Group and the Koch brothers to purchase candidates with massive amounts of cash. No matter who you vote for, you've already been sold out.
The result is a system made up of two subspecies: whores and whore mongers. The whores need the cash to get elected, but have to sell their votes in the process. The whore mongers are more than happy to provide the cash in exchange for the privilege of screwing the middle class and the poor with impunity. The game is rigged. Which side gets elected is making less and less difference.
Solution? A constitutional amendment overturning the Citizens decision that would ban all corporate money from all elections. No more shadow Koch brother front organizations. Complete transparency and financial accountability. Limit the size of contributions from individuals. Something not likely to happen since the whore mongers will pay their whores ever larger amounts of cash to prevent.
Unless there is a massive public movement against the sham system. The current Occupy Movement has the potential to put together the popular non-violent uprising that's desperately needed. Whether it can evolve into this kind of movement remains to be seen.
The hope lies in the fact that more and more people are realizing voting is not enough in a broken, rigged, system. People need to be in the streets for the whores and whore mongers to fear, and pay attention. The Movement has to grow in size and influence until a tipping point is reached; the point where the whores fear us more than their corporate pimps.
Occupy. Vote. Raise some Hell. Take your hard earned cash elsewhere. Petition. Bring the pressure. Bring the outrage. Demand to be heard, and heeded. There is strength in numbers. And there are more of us than there are of them.
The Jawbone.
In that intentionally irreverent spirit I will go my polling place tomorrow. I go for two reasons. One, voting gives me the right to bitch and generally raise hell about the hijacking of what used to be our democratic process. Two, this is a local, state house, election. What may be the last bastion of something remotely resembling democracy, although that too is disappearing.
My hope for local, state house elections is that they may not be quite as infected with corporate money. I remain idealist enough to still believe that there is, on the local level, at least a chance that a citizen can run for office on a very small budget and still have a chance to win. Rare. But it remains within the boundaries of possibility.
On the national level that is not the case. Here democracy is a thin veneer covering a completely corrupted system. Where is the democracy when both sides are bought and paid for by their corporate pimps? Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that allows companies like Bank of American and United Health Group and the Koch brothers to purchase candidates with massive amounts of cash. No matter who you vote for, you've already been sold out.
The result is a system made up of two subspecies: whores and whore mongers. The whores need the cash to get elected, but have to sell their votes in the process. The whore mongers are more than happy to provide the cash in exchange for the privilege of screwing the middle class and the poor with impunity. The game is rigged. Which side gets elected is making less and less difference.
Solution? A constitutional amendment overturning the Citizens decision that would ban all corporate money from all elections. No more shadow Koch brother front organizations. Complete transparency and financial accountability. Limit the size of contributions from individuals. Something not likely to happen since the whore mongers will pay their whores ever larger amounts of cash to prevent.
Unless there is a massive public movement against the sham system. The current Occupy Movement has the potential to put together the popular non-violent uprising that's desperately needed. Whether it can evolve into this kind of movement remains to be seen.
The hope lies in the fact that more and more people are realizing voting is not enough in a broken, rigged, system. People need to be in the streets for the whores and whore mongers to fear, and pay attention. The Movement has to grow in size and influence until a tipping point is reached; the point where the whores fear us more than their corporate pimps.
Occupy. Vote. Raise some Hell. Take your hard earned cash elsewhere. Petition. Bring the pressure. Bring the outrage. Demand to be heard, and heeded. There is strength in numbers. And there are more of us than there are of them.
The Jawbone.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Occupy Roanoke, Wall Street, And Just About Everywhere Else
Not being listened to; that feeling that tells you no matter how many petitions you sign, or emails you send, the people on the other end of the line couldn't care less about whether you have a decent job, can make rent, buy food, or buy your kids pens and pencils for school. It's demeaning. It's dehumanizing. And it's infuriating.
If I had a dollar for every petition I've signed, every email, every letter I've sent to my elected officials over the last few years, I wouldn't be writing this. I'd be heading out the back door of my Costa Rica beach house, surfboard underarm, aiming to catch the afternoon glass. I'm not quite ready to say petitions and emails and letters don't matter, but when the signs are clear that no one in Washington is taking them seriously, then it's time to take it to the next level.
In that spirit I headed down to Occupy Roanoke. The first thing to catch my eye were the signs. A young college student with an accent I couldn't quite place stood on the curb holding up brown cardboard on which she'd neatly written: "I Can't Afford my own Politician, so I Made this Sign." Now, I thought, there's a sentiment I can get with. Every once in a while she'd flip it over to the backside where she'd written, "Abolish the Fed." Well, I'll have to give that one some thought.
"Sign, sign, everywhere a sign..." that old song from the Five Man Electrical Band began playing in my head.
Have a concern? Here's the paint. Here's the crayons and markers. Help yourself. Make your own. Stand a post. Or pick up one of the pre-made that reflect your sentiments and get over to the curb. Make your voice heard. "Honk if You're One of the 99%" And I heard a lot of horns throughout the day. I picked up the one that said, "Whatever Happened to Shared Sacrifice?"
We were aging radicals from the sixties. And we were middle school students. And college students, environmental activists concerned about climate change. Some of us had jobs. Some hadn't worked in a long while. We were Vietnam and WWII vets. Conservatives. Progressives. Independents. Republicans. Democrats. Homeless folks taking advantage of the free potato soup. Each and all gathered while folk musicians and drummers provided the soundtrack. Diversity was the order of the day.
An organizer stood at the foot of the monument. "It's about time for the two-o'clock march. So here are the rules: be true to our non-violent commitment; be respectful of one another and of pedestrians, they have the right-of-way; if confronted, let the people with the orange armbands move in to diffuse the situation; invite others to join us; we are the 99%"
Off we went. Down the main drag of downtown, passed the big banks, over to the city market and back up to the park. We chanted "We Are the 99%" as passers-by gave us the thumbs up, or just broke into applause. " And "Tell me what democracy looks like.... THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!!" with the drummers keeping time.
Speaker time. Want to make yourself heard? Sign up over there. You've got five minutes to make your case. The case for bringing our troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq. The case for spending that two billion a month to repair crumbling bridges that aren't safe to drive on and pot holes you can lose a Volkswagen in. The case for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision that makes the voice of the people null and void in the halls of power. For banning all corporate money in politics to put and end to corporate Fascism and restore representative Democracy. The case for decent jobs for a liveable wage. The case for Rand Paul and abolishing the Federal Reserve. Whatever....
"Tell me what democracy looks like. THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!!
And underlying every word, the deep-felt concern, the awareness, the certainty, that nobody in Washington is listening... So this is why we're here. You can't run. You can't hide. We're tired of not being listened to, and we're just not going to take it any more. Ignoring us is about as wise as sitting on a powder keg while smoking one of your fat corporate-bought cigars.
A sentiment I found well expressed by the young man I passed as I left the park to head home. He had the grizzled look of a young mountain man. On his back was a baby pack with a very young child. Above the pack he'd made a frame for his sign: "Fear Us. We've Already Lost Everything."
Now it begins.... more to follow....
The Jawbone
If I had a dollar for every petition I've signed, every email, every letter I've sent to my elected officials over the last few years, I wouldn't be writing this. I'd be heading out the back door of my Costa Rica beach house, surfboard underarm, aiming to catch the afternoon glass. I'm not quite ready to say petitions and emails and letters don't matter, but when the signs are clear that no one in Washington is taking them seriously, then it's time to take it to the next level.
In that spirit I headed down to Occupy Roanoke. The first thing to catch my eye were the signs. A young college student with an accent I couldn't quite place stood on the curb holding up brown cardboard on which she'd neatly written: "I Can't Afford my own Politician, so I Made this Sign." Now, I thought, there's a sentiment I can get with. Every once in a while she'd flip it over to the backside where she'd written, "Abolish the Fed." Well, I'll have to give that one some thought.
"Sign, sign, everywhere a sign..." that old song from the Five Man Electrical Band began playing in my head.
Have a concern? Here's the paint. Here's the crayons and markers. Help yourself. Make your own. Stand a post. Or pick up one of the pre-made that reflect your sentiments and get over to the curb. Make your voice heard. "Honk if You're One of the 99%" And I heard a lot of horns throughout the day. I picked up the one that said, "Whatever Happened to Shared Sacrifice?"
We were aging radicals from the sixties. And we were middle school students. And college students, environmental activists concerned about climate change. Some of us had jobs. Some hadn't worked in a long while. We were Vietnam and WWII vets. Conservatives. Progressives. Independents. Republicans. Democrats. Homeless folks taking advantage of the free potato soup. Each and all gathered while folk musicians and drummers provided the soundtrack. Diversity was the order of the day.
An organizer stood at the foot of the monument. "It's about time for the two-o'clock march. So here are the rules: be true to our non-violent commitment; be respectful of one another and of pedestrians, they have the right-of-way; if confronted, let the people with the orange armbands move in to diffuse the situation; invite others to join us; we are the 99%"
Off we went. Down the main drag of downtown, passed the big banks, over to the city market and back up to the park. We chanted "We Are the 99%" as passers-by gave us the thumbs up, or just broke into applause. " And "Tell me what democracy looks like.... THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!!" with the drummers keeping time.
Speaker time. Want to make yourself heard? Sign up over there. You've got five minutes to make your case. The case for bringing our troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq. The case for spending that two billion a month to repair crumbling bridges that aren't safe to drive on and pot holes you can lose a Volkswagen in. The case for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision that makes the voice of the people null and void in the halls of power. For banning all corporate money in politics to put and end to corporate Fascism and restore representative Democracy. The case for decent jobs for a liveable wage. The case for Rand Paul and abolishing the Federal Reserve. Whatever....
"Tell me what democracy looks like. THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!!
And underlying every word, the deep-felt concern, the awareness, the certainty, that nobody in Washington is listening... So this is why we're here. You can't run. You can't hide. We're tired of not being listened to, and we're just not going to take it any more. Ignoring us is about as wise as sitting on a powder keg while smoking one of your fat corporate-bought cigars.
A sentiment I found well expressed by the young man I passed as I left the park to head home. He had the grizzled look of a young mountain man. On his back was a baby pack with a very young child. Above the pack he'd made a frame for his sign: "Fear Us. We've Already Lost Everything."
Now it begins.... more to follow....
The Jawbone
Friday, September 16, 2011
Should Death Sentences be Chiseled in Stone, or Written with Pencil?
Next Wednesday, Troy Davis may die. An African-American man convicted of killing a Savannah, Georgia, police officer in 1989, Davis is the latest face at the center of the death penalty debate. The operative word here is "may." A petition of over 663,000 names, mine among them, has been presented to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. The petition calls on the five member board, which will meet Monday to decide Davis' fate, to set aside his death sentence. A simple majority is all that's required for the thumbs up, or down.
Controversy surrounds Davis' conviction. Since the trial, seven of nine witnesses have either recanted or altered their sworn testimony. And Davis has never faltered in his claim of innocence. Given these circumstances, the Georgia Board should commute the sentence. In the face of such uncertainty, caution should prevail, the benefit of doubt given to the condemned.
In all cases, I am opposed to the death penalty. I prefer the sentence of life in prison, without parole. It allows for a bit off leeway in what is, at very best, a system of justice that is imperfect, subject to error. From time to time, we screw up. The prisoner can be released. The dead, whether innocent or guilty, remain forever in the grave.
David R. Dow, founder of the Texas Innocence Project, provides names and faces and stories of justice gone awry. There's Francis Newton, executed for killing her two children and husband; without getting a drop of blood or gunpowder residue on herself. Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004, for killing his three children by setting the house on fire. Problem is, four national arson experts reviewed the case, each concluding the fire was accidental. There's Anthony Graves, released after fourteen years on death row, exonerated in 2010. We could go on. But even a single case makes the point.
Certainty is rarely, if ever, possible. DNA? Very useful, to be sure, both in exonerating the wrongly convicted and in convicting the rightly accused. Infallible evidence? Not so fast there. Evidence is gathered by often careful but sometimes careless investigators, processed by usually exacting but sometimes overly fatigued lab technicians. Maybe an inadvertent mistake was made.
Hubris. Any arrogance that refuses to admit the possibility of error is a dangerous thing. Pride goeth before a wrongful execution.When asked in Wednesday night's Republican debate whether he struggled with the possibility that an innocent person had been executed on his watch, candidate and Governor of Texas Rick Perry answered, "Ive never struggled with that at all."
234 executions and counting on his watch; that's some sense of certainty there, Governor. Are you sure a bit of caution might not be a good idea? I mean, the odds alone should give a thinking individual pause. But better not to waver. The Presidency is at stake. And that's what bothers me.
I'm not for coddling violent criminals. I read of crimes so heinous that I give thanks my guns are behind lock and key. At the news of such horrors, I find within myself a rage that would, given the proper time and circumstance, compel me to drop the hammer on the perpetrator myself. Lock and key provide just enough delay to allow more sane thoughts to regain their appropriate place in my psyche.
That pause for reflection is what a justice system is supposed to provide, lest we confuse our concern for justice with our thirst, understandable at times, for revenge.
I hope the Georgia Board will decide in favor of Troy Davis. No criminal conviction should ever be chiseled in stone. Better to write in pencil. That makes it easier to go back and correct our mistakes.
The Jawbone
Controversy surrounds Davis' conviction. Since the trial, seven of nine witnesses have either recanted or altered their sworn testimony. And Davis has never faltered in his claim of innocence. Given these circumstances, the Georgia Board should commute the sentence. In the face of such uncertainty, caution should prevail, the benefit of doubt given to the condemned.
In all cases, I am opposed to the death penalty. I prefer the sentence of life in prison, without parole. It allows for a bit off leeway in what is, at very best, a system of justice that is imperfect, subject to error. From time to time, we screw up. The prisoner can be released. The dead, whether innocent or guilty, remain forever in the grave.
David R. Dow, founder of the Texas Innocence Project, provides names and faces and stories of justice gone awry. There's Francis Newton, executed for killing her two children and husband; without getting a drop of blood or gunpowder residue on herself. Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004, for killing his three children by setting the house on fire. Problem is, four national arson experts reviewed the case, each concluding the fire was accidental. There's Anthony Graves, released after fourteen years on death row, exonerated in 2010. We could go on. But even a single case makes the point.
Certainty is rarely, if ever, possible. DNA? Very useful, to be sure, both in exonerating the wrongly convicted and in convicting the rightly accused. Infallible evidence? Not so fast there. Evidence is gathered by often careful but sometimes careless investigators, processed by usually exacting but sometimes overly fatigued lab technicians. Maybe an inadvertent mistake was made.
Hubris. Any arrogance that refuses to admit the possibility of error is a dangerous thing. Pride goeth before a wrongful execution.When asked in Wednesday night's Republican debate whether he struggled with the possibility that an innocent person had been executed on his watch, candidate and Governor of Texas Rick Perry answered, "Ive never struggled with that at all."
234 executions and counting on his watch; that's some sense of certainty there, Governor. Are you sure a bit of caution might not be a good idea? I mean, the odds alone should give a thinking individual pause. But better not to waver. The Presidency is at stake. And that's what bothers me.
I'm not for coddling violent criminals. I read of crimes so heinous that I give thanks my guns are behind lock and key. At the news of such horrors, I find within myself a rage that would, given the proper time and circumstance, compel me to drop the hammer on the perpetrator myself. Lock and key provide just enough delay to allow more sane thoughts to regain their appropriate place in my psyche.
That pause for reflection is what a justice system is supposed to provide, lest we confuse our concern for justice with our thirst, understandable at times, for revenge.
I hope the Georgia Board will decide in favor of Troy Davis. No criminal conviction should ever be chiseled in stone. Better to write in pencil. That makes it easier to go back and correct our mistakes.
The Jawbone
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Apocalypse Now
I'd just settled into the easy chair at Barnes and Nobles cafe when it felt as though someone had just bumped into the back of my chair. Hmm, some careless barrista banging his cart into the other side of the wall, I thought. Then the growing vibration, the more than occasional bumping, felt through the back of the chair, the floor, the lady over in the corner pulling off her headset, "Do you feel that?" Between strangers, knowing glances asking without words, "When do we run?" A young man at the table in front of me, "It's an earthquake. They're feeling it in Washington."
"The Utne Reader" is not a magazine I'd picked up in a while, years, actually. What unconscious prescience had brought me to turn to the article on--check out the current edition for yourself--on nature's apocalypse--specifically, Haiti style? At least that's what I think the article is about. I made it only to the third paragraph before the conversation between author and reader was somewhat rudely interrupted by Mother Nature.
I live a few miles south of the epicenter. Believe me, what we coffee drinkers and readers and laptoppers felt here was nothing close to the twist and shout they got in D.C. and destinations north. For a few moments I was the only one in the room who recognized what was happening. Indianapolis, Indiana sits over a major fault line, the name of which I don't recall. Midera, Madra something or other that sounds like that's the name.
Back in the eighties when our young family was living there, several times we'd be sitting at dinner and notice the wine beginning to move back and forth in tiny waves inside the glass. Such are the moments when our language allows us to mingle the sacred with the profane--Holy Shit! A phrase recognizable to most everyone from the deep South to my beloved New England just a few hours ago.
Earth moves beneath your feet, and something inside you is moved to summon whatever Sacred powers we may hope exist; while we simultaneously recognize the unsavory fragilities of human existence. My mother may not like my using the phrase, but "Holy Shit!" well describes human experience.
Rarely do I listen to the radio when I'm driving. Today was no exception, preferring to rock out to a CD I'd just picked up of my favorite live Fleetwood Mac concert, "The Dance." On my day off I much prefer Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks rocking "Go Your Own Way" to one another than having to listen to yet another Rick Perry idiotic misreading of American history. (No, Mr. Perry, the Black experience cannot be likened to the Republican quest for less taxes! But don't get me started.)
I was surprised when I got home and turned on the news to discover that what had been a little rumbling at the book store was in fact much more. And, much, much more. Seems there was more damage than a few cracked walls and fallen chimneys and smashed cars.
I mean, Holy Shit! As if...? I mean, As if an earthquake isn't enough! There's this hurricane that looks like it's trying to make up it's fickle mind whether to slam Florida or cut right and head into North Carolina and Virginia before it goes after my younger daughter and her horses up in New England.
But, wait a minute, CNN is cutting away to Libya because the rebels have taken Gadaffe's compound and no one knows where he is.... Then there's this quick cut back to the House of Representatives guy who's saying our intelligence community and whoever the Hell else is in charge needs to get over there really fast because we need to find a way to make sure the mustard gas and other chemical weapons don't fall into "the wrong hands...."
Okay. Here we go. It's nine pm, my time. Nine pm. Our time. All of our times. The earth has shifted beneath our feet. There's a major hurricane bearing down on us. And a bunch of rag-tag hero freedom fighters who don't know shit from shit about running a country are suddenly sitting on top of God only knows how much Weapons of Mass Destruction stuff that could wipe out half of New York if the wrong fanatics get hold of it.
Damn. I just can't figure out how I keep picking the wrong day to stop drinking!
Let's sort this out. Two events, earthquake and hurricane, are Mother Nature's invention. I can't; you can't; none of us can do squat about whatever Ms. Nature decides to do. It's sort of like that old margarine ad: Mother Nature's back! And, I would ad, She's pissed!! And after everything we've made her suffer through, who could blame her? Nature brings her version of Apocalypse.
Then there's this other situation. Libya. Gaddafi. WMD. Well, I guess we humans have to take responsibility for that. Just as we, as a species--well, what else do you think we are? if not one more species beside the rest of the bugs and bees and grasshoppers and birds and, well, you get it... We bring our own apocalypse... Libya. Washington. Our decisions have consequences. Karma happens. We make history. History makes us. It's always both/and. Apocalypse Now.
When I was a doctoral candidate, my committee chairman, a scholar now well known to all in the field of the history of religions, told me, "Alan, history is a whirlwind. Often, we are caught up in it. But we are never without freedom. We choose how we will respond to the events that sweep us up in histories' storms."
Okay. It's now almost ten o'clock, my time, our time. This is all totally freelance... So I ask... How am I going to respond to all I've experienced today? Tomorrow morning? What kind of attitude am I going to get up with? It's my choice. ?
Hey, it comes down to this: we hit the world with one of two attitudes, life preferences, ways of being in this world.... Either I choose to go out into this world tomorrow morning with.... either an attitude of faith... or fear... I choose faith.
Faith in myself as a moral human being who knows that were it not for my sense of morality, of right and wrong, I could not have written any of this. Faith in the teachings of Christ, and of the Dalai Lama; that is: that compassion for all sentient beings is the highest ethical standard to which any of us can aspire.
Fear cringes. Fear hides in a cave. Fear says I can't do anything that matters. Fear says we are the helpless pawns of blind fate... and nothing besides.
Faith says I will have compassion. Compassion says, I care, and I'll do all I can for the victims of natural disaster.
Faith, the very essence of compassion, says, I do all I can for the victims of man-made catastrophe, like Libya, or.... wherever humanity has used it's freedom to royally screw up.
Okay. So. I mean, Holy Shit! What a day to stop drinking! Natural disasters by the truckload. Human malevolence that could destroy millions! So.... really.... how do I get up in the morning and carry on?
Faith? Fear? You figure it out.... I'm going to bed... But.... See you tomorrow...
The Jawbone
"The Utne Reader" is not a magazine I'd picked up in a while, years, actually. What unconscious prescience had brought me to turn to the article on--check out the current edition for yourself--on nature's apocalypse--specifically, Haiti style? At least that's what I think the article is about. I made it only to the third paragraph before the conversation between author and reader was somewhat rudely interrupted by Mother Nature.
I live a few miles south of the epicenter. Believe me, what we coffee drinkers and readers and laptoppers felt here was nothing close to the twist and shout they got in D.C. and destinations north. For a few moments I was the only one in the room who recognized what was happening. Indianapolis, Indiana sits over a major fault line, the name of which I don't recall. Midera, Madra something or other that sounds like that's the name.
Back in the eighties when our young family was living there, several times we'd be sitting at dinner and notice the wine beginning to move back and forth in tiny waves inside the glass. Such are the moments when our language allows us to mingle the sacred with the profane--Holy Shit! A phrase recognizable to most everyone from the deep South to my beloved New England just a few hours ago.
Earth moves beneath your feet, and something inside you is moved to summon whatever Sacred powers we may hope exist; while we simultaneously recognize the unsavory fragilities of human existence. My mother may not like my using the phrase, but "Holy Shit!" well describes human experience.
Rarely do I listen to the radio when I'm driving. Today was no exception, preferring to rock out to a CD I'd just picked up of my favorite live Fleetwood Mac concert, "The Dance." On my day off I much prefer Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks rocking "Go Your Own Way" to one another than having to listen to yet another Rick Perry idiotic misreading of American history. (No, Mr. Perry, the Black experience cannot be likened to the Republican quest for less taxes! But don't get me started.)
I was surprised when I got home and turned on the news to discover that what had been a little rumbling at the book store was in fact much more. And, much, much more. Seems there was more damage than a few cracked walls and fallen chimneys and smashed cars.
I mean, Holy Shit! As if...? I mean, As if an earthquake isn't enough! There's this hurricane that looks like it's trying to make up it's fickle mind whether to slam Florida or cut right and head into North Carolina and Virginia before it goes after my younger daughter and her horses up in New England.
But, wait a minute, CNN is cutting away to Libya because the rebels have taken Gadaffe's compound and no one knows where he is.... Then there's this quick cut back to the House of Representatives guy who's saying our intelligence community and whoever the Hell else is in charge needs to get over there really fast because we need to find a way to make sure the mustard gas and other chemical weapons don't fall into "the wrong hands...."
Okay. Here we go. It's nine pm, my time. Nine pm. Our time. All of our times. The earth has shifted beneath our feet. There's a major hurricane bearing down on us. And a bunch of rag-tag hero freedom fighters who don't know shit from shit about running a country are suddenly sitting on top of God only knows how much Weapons of Mass Destruction stuff that could wipe out half of New York if the wrong fanatics get hold of it.
Damn. I just can't figure out how I keep picking the wrong day to stop drinking!
Let's sort this out. Two events, earthquake and hurricane, are Mother Nature's invention. I can't; you can't; none of us can do squat about whatever Ms. Nature decides to do. It's sort of like that old margarine ad: Mother Nature's back! And, I would ad, She's pissed!! And after everything we've made her suffer through, who could blame her? Nature brings her version of Apocalypse.
Then there's this other situation. Libya. Gaddafi. WMD. Well, I guess we humans have to take responsibility for that. Just as we, as a species--well, what else do you think we are? if not one more species beside the rest of the bugs and bees and grasshoppers and birds and, well, you get it... We bring our own apocalypse... Libya. Washington. Our decisions have consequences. Karma happens. We make history. History makes us. It's always both/and. Apocalypse Now.
When I was a doctoral candidate, my committee chairman, a scholar now well known to all in the field of the history of religions, told me, "Alan, history is a whirlwind. Often, we are caught up in it. But we are never without freedom. We choose how we will respond to the events that sweep us up in histories' storms."
Okay. It's now almost ten o'clock, my time, our time. This is all totally freelance... So I ask... How am I going to respond to all I've experienced today? Tomorrow morning? What kind of attitude am I going to get up with? It's my choice. ?
Hey, it comes down to this: we hit the world with one of two attitudes, life preferences, ways of being in this world.... Either I choose to go out into this world tomorrow morning with.... either an attitude of faith... or fear... I choose faith.
Faith in myself as a moral human being who knows that were it not for my sense of morality, of right and wrong, I could not have written any of this. Faith in the teachings of Christ, and of the Dalai Lama; that is: that compassion for all sentient beings is the highest ethical standard to which any of us can aspire.
Fear cringes. Fear hides in a cave. Fear says I can't do anything that matters. Fear says we are the helpless pawns of blind fate... and nothing besides.
Faith says I will have compassion. Compassion says, I care, and I'll do all I can for the victims of natural disaster.
Faith, the very essence of compassion, says, I do all I can for the victims of man-made catastrophe, like Libya, or.... wherever humanity has used it's freedom to royally screw up.
Okay. So. I mean, Holy Shit! What a day to stop drinking! Natural disasters by the truckload. Human malevolence that could destroy millions! So.... really.... how do I get up in the morning and carry on?
Faith? Fear? You figure it out.... I'm going to bed... But.... See you tomorrow...
The Jawbone
Monday, July 25, 2011
Welcome to the Age of the Blind Fanatic
"I must confess that the great political movements of our day frighten me with their reckless
certainties and their insistence on treating people as means to be manipulated rather than as ends
for which government exists. Liberalism and conservatism, in their current incarnations, both
possess great ideas, worthy of a fair hearing and fair debate... and great capacities for hatred."
(from Integrity, Stephen L. Carter, 1996, p. 209)
That strange whirring sound you hear when you step outside should alarm you. It's the sound of James Madison spinning in his grave. James, you may remember, was one of those Founding Fathers we seem to be hearing so much about these days. It was Madison who warned, in The Federalist No. 10, against letting our politics be overrun by "factions." Factions, he believed, are by their very nature destructive of authentic democracy.
It seems we've enetered into the age Madison most feared, the age when politics is taken over by factions; welcome to the Age of the Blind Fanatic.
These insane zealots seem to be everywhere. The Blind Fanatics are easily recognizable. You can pick them out of any crowd. They are certain, absolutely certain, that they are right, and everyone, and I mean everyone else, is wrong. And, lest anyone doubt their righteousness, their position is always endorsed by their particular notion of "God." They harbour no doubt, none, that God is on their side--and no one elses. Anyone who disagrees with their ideaology, whether it be political, economic, moral, or religious, is not merely someone with a different opinion worthy of respect and civil debate, but an enemy to be not only feared, but hated, and, if possible, destroyed, or at very least, driven from the public square.
Make no mistake about it, there is an insanity to this age. Once again, this week we've been reminded of how far the Blind Fanatic will go, so consumed is he by his self-assured, God-endorsed, ideological purity that slaughtering children at a summer camp is not beyond his moral certainty. And, lest we be tempted to point the accusing finger too quickly at others, we need remember only two words: Oaklahoma City. America, too, has its lunatic fringe.
Most Blind Fanatics are not violent, of course. These are truly the lunatic fringe. I use the fringe to illustrate just how crazy all this can get. But there is one idea, one notion, one absolute principle the Blind Fanatic of every stripe, ideology, religion, politics, morals or whatever holds sacred: Compromise is the language of the Devil. To the Blind Fanatic, the very mention of the vile, disgusting, immoral, word compromise means you are the Devil incarnate, the enemy, the traitor who must be eliminated. As we have been reminded, some are a bit more extreme in their understanding of what it means to eliminate the opposition than others.
In the Age of the Blind Fanatic democracy becomes impossible. Because democracy is itself the language of compromise. It works only when those involved are willing to consider that those with other views might---Good God!!---actually have a valid point or two; only when those involved become willing not only to present their position but listen to someone else's.
Just over two-and-a-half millennia ago, the Buddha did some experiementing and came up with this really innovative idea. He tried the high life, denying himself no pleasures. That didn't lead to the happiness he sought. So he tried the other extreme, radical self-denial. That didn't quite cut it either. About that time he heard someone tuning a stringed instrument. Too tight, the string breaks. Too loose and you can't hit the note. But if you tune it just right, not too tight, not too loose, you can play the instrument. So, being rather a bright sort, he concluded the truth of right living just might be somewhere in between the two extremes. This was the Buddha's "middle way."
The political implications are inescapable. I wonder, What would Buddha do? Would he increase revenues or cut spending? Or would he seek the middle way? Quite probably. And if we are to believe the polls this middle way is what most of us would like Washington to find. The vast majority of us have no desire to live in this Age of Blind Fanaticism, preferring instead a more reasoned approach to our politics.
The middle way is the way of shared sacrifice; the way of shared responsibility for the well being of the least among us--the poor, the young, the elderly, the weak, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the powerless, the social and economic outcasts.
Demanding anything less from our leadership amounts to a sellout of democracy to the very factionalism James Madison warned us against.
The Jawbone
certainties and their insistence on treating people as means to be manipulated rather than as ends
for which government exists. Liberalism and conservatism, in their current incarnations, both
possess great ideas, worthy of a fair hearing and fair debate... and great capacities for hatred."
(from Integrity, Stephen L. Carter, 1996, p. 209)
That strange whirring sound you hear when you step outside should alarm you. It's the sound of James Madison spinning in his grave. James, you may remember, was one of those Founding Fathers we seem to be hearing so much about these days. It was Madison who warned, in The Federalist No. 10, against letting our politics be overrun by "factions." Factions, he believed, are by their very nature destructive of authentic democracy.
It seems we've enetered into the age Madison most feared, the age when politics is taken over by factions; welcome to the Age of the Blind Fanatic.
These insane zealots seem to be everywhere. The Blind Fanatics are easily recognizable. You can pick them out of any crowd. They are certain, absolutely certain, that they are right, and everyone, and I mean everyone else, is wrong. And, lest anyone doubt their righteousness, their position is always endorsed by their particular notion of "God." They harbour no doubt, none, that God is on their side--and no one elses. Anyone who disagrees with their ideaology, whether it be political, economic, moral, or religious, is not merely someone with a different opinion worthy of respect and civil debate, but an enemy to be not only feared, but hated, and, if possible, destroyed, or at very least, driven from the public square.
Make no mistake about it, there is an insanity to this age. Once again, this week we've been reminded of how far the Blind Fanatic will go, so consumed is he by his self-assured, God-endorsed, ideological purity that slaughtering children at a summer camp is not beyond his moral certainty. And, lest we be tempted to point the accusing finger too quickly at others, we need remember only two words: Oaklahoma City. America, too, has its lunatic fringe.
Most Blind Fanatics are not violent, of course. These are truly the lunatic fringe. I use the fringe to illustrate just how crazy all this can get. But there is one idea, one notion, one absolute principle the Blind Fanatic of every stripe, ideology, religion, politics, morals or whatever holds sacred: Compromise is the language of the Devil. To the Blind Fanatic, the very mention of the vile, disgusting, immoral, word compromise means you are the Devil incarnate, the enemy, the traitor who must be eliminated. As we have been reminded, some are a bit more extreme in their understanding of what it means to eliminate the opposition than others.
In the Age of the Blind Fanatic democracy becomes impossible. Because democracy is itself the language of compromise. It works only when those involved are willing to consider that those with other views might---Good God!!---actually have a valid point or two; only when those involved become willing not only to present their position but listen to someone else's.
Just over two-and-a-half millennia ago, the Buddha did some experiementing and came up with this really innovative idea. He tried the high life, denying himself no pleasures. That didn't lead to the happiness he sought. So he tried the other extreme, radical self-denial. That didn't quite cut it either. About that time he heard someone tuning a stringed instrument. Too tight, the string breaks. Too loose and you can't hit the note. But if you tune it just right, not too tight, not too loose, you can play the instrument. So, being rather a bright sort, he concluded the truth of right living just might be somewhere in between the two extremes. This was the Buddha's "middle way."
The political implications are inescapable. I wonder, What would Buddha do? Would he increase revenues or cut spending? Or would he seek the middle way? Quite probably. And if we are to believe the polls this middle way is what most of us would like Washington to find. The vast majority of us have no desire to live in this Age of Blind Fanaticism, preferring instead a more reasoned approach to our politics.
The middle way is the way of shared sacrifice; the way of shared responsibility for the well being of the least among us--the poor, the young, the elderly, the weak, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the powerless, the social and economic outcasts.
Demanding anything less from our leadership amounts to a sellout of democracy to the very factionalism James Madison warned us against.
The Jawbone
Monday, July 11, 2011
Progress is Made
There must be some kinda way outta here,
Said the joker to the thief.
There's too much confusion,
I can't get no relief...
From All Along the Watchtower
by Bob Dylan
This whole charade makes me want to get into my car, drive up to D.C., park in front of the Capital, get out, calmly jog up those long white steps, bump into the first elected officeholder I meet and, with complete disregard for party affiliation, beat the living shit out of them. Not that I would ever actually do so, at least not this week. But I don't think I'm alone in the frustration.
I am a political junkie. Depending on what time I need to be at work, my day begins with Joe and Mika and Mike, flipping back and forth between MSNBC, CNN, HLN, Today, Good Morning America, and CBS Morning. At our house we have dinner with Chris and Chenk, Lawrence and Ed and Wolff and their guests. But after a while, the constant barrage of almost incomprehensible stupidity, the failure to act, the divisions, the meaningless rhetoric, the endless wars, the body counts, the bullshit coming out of Washington while the rest of us struggle with rising food prices and gas prices and the prices of everything else while the rich get richer and the rest of us get screwed becomes overwhelming, and infuriating.
"There must be some kinda way outta here.... too much confusion...." I can relate. There just isn't any good news, a friend said to me not long ago. It certainly seems so.
There are times when I need to get some distance between me and the evening bad news. Times to move out a bit and get some perspective on things. I've found that distance is often the only thing between my sanity and despair. I've always loved that opening paragraph to Moby Dick, that reads, in part:
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself pausing involuntarily before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
There has to be an ebb and flow to my involvement in the affairs of the day. There has to be a balance. There is a time to tune in, sign petitions, help with the campaign, man the phone bank, write blogs and letters, swear at the idiot on television, call my representatives, email, demonstrate and march, meet up and join up and join in.
But all of that has to be balanced with, as Melville says so well, a "time to get to sea as soon as I can." When, like this week, nothing is getting done and we seem governed by a confederacy of dunces advised by dim-witted professional dullards, I need to go sit and watch the waves, and, if the surf's up, ride a few.
I live inland now, so I don't surf as much as I used to. But the spiritual principle is the same. We need time sitting on the mountain, hiking the trail, watching the waves, sitting in the boat with a line in the water, or on the meditation cushion, doing whatever it is we do to touch the Infinite, to breathe, regain focus. Perspective is everything. To be is to do and if we forget to just be we soon have no idea what to do next.
Politics and spirituality meet the moment we ask, How shall we live together? How will we govern ourselves with justice and compassion? And how do we stand up to those in power who clearly don't give a damn about either?
Now, things are a mess. But when I take time to just be, to get in touch with the Infinite, I realize we are in this for the long haul. Change does happen. Progress is made. It just takes a while. There is a direction, an arch to history. As Dr. King reminded us, "it bends toward justice."
When I was in elementary school my mother and I would occasionally walk the couple of blocks down to the drug store. That was the early sixties, when drug stores had lunch counters. One day I was sitting at that lunch counter drinking my favorite chocolate shake. I noticed a sign behind the counter that said, "We reserve the right to refuse to serve anyone." On the walk back home I asked what that meant. "It means they won't serve Negroes at the lunch counter. And it really shouldn't be that way." It would take a few more years before I had any real understanding of what she meant.
But lunch counters would play a significant role in the Civil Rights movement. Now the sign and the apartheid it sanctioned are gone. Progress is made, slowly. And we have to keep working at it. To see the good news we have to take the long view and not get too bogged down in the confusion of the present chaos. Perspective gives us the hope it takes to wade back into the struggle; the courage to campaign on behalf of those getting the latest raw deal.
It's the only way "outta here."
The Jawbone
Said the joker to the thief.
There's too much confusion,
I can't get no relief...
From All Along the Watchtower
by Bob Dylan
This whole charade makes me want to get into my car, drive up to D.C., park in front of the Capital, get out, calmly jog up those long white steps, bump into the first elected officeholder I meet and, with complete disregard for party affiliation, beat the living shit out of them. Not that I would ever actually do so, at least not this week. But I don't think I'm alone in the frustration.
I am a political junkie. Depending on what time I need to be at work, my day begins with Joe and Mika and Mike, flipping back and forth between MSNBC, CNN, HLN, Today, Good Morning America, and CBS Morning. At our house we have dinner with Chris and Chenk, Lawrence and Ed and Wolff and their guests. But after a while, the constant barrage of almost incomprehensible stupidity, the failure to act, the divisions, the meaningless rhetoric, the endless wars, the body counts, the bullshit coming out of Washington while the rest of us struggle with rising food prices and gas prices and the prices of everything else while the rich get richer and the rest of us get screwed becomes overwhelming, and infuriating.
"There must be some kinda way outta here.... too much confusion...." I can relate. There just isn't any good news, a friend said to me not long ago. It certainly seems so.
There are times when I need to get some distance between me and the evening bad news. Times to move out a bit and get some perspective on things. I've found that distance is often the only thing between my sanity and despair. I've always loved that opening paragraph to Moby Dick, that reads, in part:
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself pausing involuntarily before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
There has to be an ebb and flow to my involvement in the affairs of the day. There has to be a balance. There is a time to tune in, sign petitions, help with the campaign, man the phone bank, write blogs and letters, swear at the idiot on television, call my representatives, email, demonstrate and march, meet up and join up and join in.
But all of that has to be balanced with, as Melville says so well, a "time to get to sea as soon as I can." When, like this week, nothing is getting done and we seem governed by a confederacy of dunces advised by dim-witted professional dullards, I need to go sit and watch the waves, and, if the surf's up, ride a few.
I live inland now, so I don't surf as much as I used to. But the spiritual principle is the same. We need time sitting on the mountain, hiking the trail, watching the waves, sitting in the boat with a line in the water, or on the meditation cushion, doing whatever it is we do to touch the Infinite, to breathe, regain focus. Perspective is everything. To be is to do and if we forget to just be we soon have no idea what to do next.
Politics and spirituality meet the moment we ask, How shall we live together? How will we govern ourselves with justice and compassion? And how do we stand up to those in power who clearly don't give a damn about either?
Now, things are a mess. But when I take time to just be, to get in touch with the Infinite, I realize we are in this for the long haul. Change does happen. Progress is made. It just takes a while. There is a direction, an arch to history. As Dr. King reminded us, "it bends toward justice."
When I was in elementary school my mother and I would occasionally walk the couple of blocks down to the drug store. That was the early sixties, when drug stores had lunch counters. One day I was sitting at that lunch counter drinking my favorite chocolate shake. I noticed a sign behind the counter that said, "We reserve the right to refuse to serve anyone." On the walk back home I asked what that meant. "It means they won't serve Negroes at the lunch counter. And it really shouldn't be that way." It would take a few more years before I had any real understanding of what she meant.
But lunch counters would play a significant role in the Civil Rights movement. Now the sign and the apartheid it sanctioned are gone. Progress is made, slowly. And we have to keep working at it. To see the good news we have to take the long view and not get too bogged down in the confusion of the present chaos. Perspective gives us the hope it takes to wade back into the struggle; the courage to campaign on behalf of those getting the latest raw deal.
It's the only way "outta here."
The Jawbone
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Putting the Right People in Jail
Depending on how this goes, there may be a few new neighbors on Mr. Madoff's cell block. It's about time. Our criminal justice system is so often tilted against the poor, minorities, petty criminals and addicts who would benefit more from treatment than incarceration, those without substantial means to defend themselves. Sometimes we put the wrong people in jail. Commit a crime in the street, you go to jail. Crime in the suite? The company picks up the tab and you take your high-priced legal beagle to lunch--on the company expense account, of course. Maybe that's about to change, at least a little.
A couple of years back the state of New York fined United Health Group fifty million for failing to properly pay claims. But hey! What's a few measly million when you're making billions? Like, who cares? So what if the business practices are a bit on the shady side? Who cares if the rules get bent a bit? Get by with it, so much the better for the bottom line. Get caught, write it off as a business expense, sort of like taking your client out to an expensive lunch. Anyway, what's a bit of health care fraud among friends, especially when the company is going to pick up the tab?
Well, thanks to a few good folks over at Health and Human Services, that attitude may be in for a change. Seems some of them got a bit frustrated over the way health care industries have been ripping us off--to the tune of about sixty billion a year. Sixty billion a year!!! This at a time when Congress is talking about cutting my mom's medicare? What's wrong with this picture?
Here's what Lewis Morris, chief counsel for the inspector general at HHS, told Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Huffington Post earlier this week: "When you look at the history of health care enforcement, we've seen a number of Fortune 500 companies that have been caught not once, not twice, but sometimes three times violating the trust of the American people, submitting false claims, paying kickbacks to doctors, marketing drugs which have not been tested for safety and efficacy. To our way of thinking, the men and women in the corporate suite aren't getting it. If writing a check for 200 million isn't enough to have a company change its ways, then maybe we have got to have the individuals who are responsible for this held accountable. The behavior of a company starts at the top."
There you go! Now we just might be getting somewhere. So Bernie may be getting some new neighbors. And for most of us, it's about time. I mean, really, who's the bigger crook? The guy who gets busted and goes up state for getting pulled over with three joints in his glove compartment? Or the guy who's spent years ripping off taxpayers for billions in corporate profits, to the extent that it's killing our ability to provide health care for our elderly parents, and never even gets arrested?
HHS is sending a wake up call to the health industry with their case against Howard Solomon, CEO of Forest Laboratories, a big pharma firm that makes antidepressants and other meds. Last year Forest plead guilty to a few justice department charges, and cut a deal with a check for 313 million. Seems they ignored an FDA notice to stop peddling a new drug that hadn't been approved. But, and here's the key point, as usual, all the bigwigs avoided jail time. So where's the incentive for the folks at the top to stay honest?
I think it's time Bernie got some new neighbors. So here's a notice to all you CEOs and other assorted corporate types who are tempted to break the rules every once in a while in the name of big time cash. It might serve you well to hang a sign on the wall across from your desk. A sign that says, "As they say up state: If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
The Jawbone
A couple of years back the state of New York fined United Health Group fifty million for failing to properly pay claims. But hey! What's a few measly million when you're making billions? Like, who cares? So what if the business practices are a bit on the shady side? Who cares if the rules get bent a bit? Get by with it, so much the better for the bottom line. Get caught, write it off as a business expense, sort of like taking your client out to an expensive lunch. Anyway, what's a bit of health care fraud among friends, especially when the company is going to pick up the tab?
Well, thanks to a few good folks over at Health and Human Services, that attitude may be in for a change. Seems some of them got a bit frustrated over the way health care industries have been ripping us off--to the tune of about sixty billion a year. Sixty billion a year!!! This at a time when Congress is talking about cutting my mom's medicare? What's wrong with this picture?
Here's what Lewis Morris, chief counsel for the inspector general at HHS, told Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Huffington Post earlier this week: "When you look at the history of health care enforcement, we've seen a number of Fortune 500 companies that have been caught not once, not twice, but sometimes three times violating the trust of the American people, submitting false claims, paying kickbacks to doctors, marketing drugs which have not been tested for safety and efficacy. To our way of thinking, the men and women in the corporate suite aren't getting it. If writing a check for 200 million isn't enough to have a company change its ways, then maybe we have got to have the individuals who are responsible for this held accountable. The behavior of a company starts at the top."
There you go! Now we just might be getting somewhere. So Bernie may be getting some new neighbors. And for most of us, it's about time. I mean, really, who's the bigger crook? The guy who gets busted and goes up state for getting pulled over with three joints in his glove compartment? Or the guy who's spent years ripping off taxpayers for billions in corporate profits, to the extent that it's killing our ability to provide health care for our elderly parents, and never even gets arrested?
HHS is sending a wake up call to the health industry with their case against Howard Solomon, CEO of Forest Laboratories, a big pharma firm that makes antidepressants and other meds. Last year Forest plead guilty to a few justice department charges, and cut a deal with a check for 313 million. Seems they ignored an FDA notice to stop peddling a new drug that hadn't been approved. But, and here's the key point, as usual, all the bigwigs avoided jail time. So where's the incentive for the folks at the top to stay honest?
I think it's time Bernie got some new neighbors. So here's a notice to all you CEOs and other assorted corporate types who are tempted to break the rules every once in a while in the name of big time cash. It might serve you well to hang a sign on the wall across from your desk. A sign that says, "As they say up state: If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
The Jawbone
Thursday, May 12, 2011
One Dollar, One Vote... Sending Wells Fargo/BofA a Message They'll Hear
Yesterday morning I got up, had my usual coffee and bagel, showered, looked into my bathroom mirror, and smiled. This is election day. The day I go to the polling place alongside every other morally responsible American, and cast my ballot. As with all other election days, some choices I make leave me feeling I've done something good, assisted in positive change, helped a little old lady across the street. Others, not so much, as though I need to go home and take another shower. It's the way I feel when I know the best I can do is enter the boothe, hold my nose, and cast my ballot for the least objectionable, stench-reeking, dirty, rotten scoundrel whose vulgar name I would never say out loud in front of my mother.
What? You missed it? You missed election day? You didn't vote? Well, no, you didn't miss it. And you did vote, several times, a dozen times, more than a dozen, maybe a thousand, or more. In America, every day is election day. Here lately, I've been trying to choose my polling places with a bit more discretion. Growing up in the sixties, the only child of Kennedy Democrats, I was taught that voting was a sacred act, not all that different from going to church.
This particular morning I was certain of doing the right thing. I headed for my local Wachovia Bank branch, today's first stop on my tour of local polling places. A bit nervous, I exited my very used old dodge and headed for the door. Would this be the gunfight at the OK coral? What would I say when they asked, as they surely would, "Why are you closing your account?"
How could I keep my cool? How could I keep from launching into a two-hundred page dissertation detailing the long list of faults and crimes against human dignity of which I found this foul establishment guilty as charged? These are good people who work here. They are not the enemy. The real enemy is far more subtle, more hidden behind cloaks of respectability. These are my neighbors who, as Lama Surya Das reminds me in his Prayer for the New Millennium, "want and need as I do." The criminals I'm after live in gated communities, guarded by rent-a-cops, meet in suites, ride in limos, and, not having to work three jobs waiting tables to make ends meet, usually tip quite poorly.
I approached a nice looking lady at the counter, handed her my check and said, "I'd like to close this account, please." I didn't want trouble. But then, here it came. "I'm sorry, sir. But I can't do that. You'll need to speak to the manager." Careful, I thought to myself. Breathe. Don't reach for that verbal six gun. Repeat. "She's not the enemy... She's not the enemy..." The last time I felt like this was upon many of the occasions in high school when I got kicked out of class and sent to the dean's office. Once again, referred to a higher power for judgment.
With trepidation, I approached the manager's desk, took my seat, and stated yet again the cause for my visit. "I'd like to close this account." She smiled. Good. Maybe this won't be so difficult. She took my info, then the fun started. Here it came. The question. The opportunity to state my case. Would I follow through, or wimp out? "Why are you closing your account?" A moment of pride, courage welled from the depths of my battered consumer soul. I sat up straight, looked into her eyes, and delivered the big one: "Because of Wells Fargo/Wachovia's disproportionate support of the Republican Party and it's policies."
The poor woman could not have looked more surprised had I leaned over the desk and slapped her across the face with a wet and slightly rotten flounder. Ah, I thought. I've landed a point. A moment of awkward silence ensued. "I'm sorry," she said. "Did you say you're closing your account because we don't support the Republican Party enough?" Prior to this moment, I'd always thought I spoke fluent English. Apparently not. Pulling another smelly flounder from my bag, I sallied forth with another attempt. "No. I'm moving my money because this bank disproportionately supports a political party, the Republican Party, whose agenda and policies I am vehemently opposed to." There, I thought. That's got to do it. We have a meeting of the minds.
Reaching for her mouse, she scrolled down her screen, befuddled, taken aback. How to record this frontal assault, this arrogance, this act of defiance of the establishment status quo upon my permanent record? More awkward silence. The system didn't allow for this impertinance. Surely, she must have thought, these things do not happen in civilized society. No one defies the mighty Wells Fargo/Wachovia Empire! She breached the silence that had fallen between us. "I guess I'm just going to have to check other."
Out the door, smiling, I'd made my statement, defied the status quo, struck a blow against the establishment. This must be the kick ass feeling King David had when he let fly the stone that slew Goliath!
Down the street I flew to Freedom First Credit Union, where I struck a second blow for human dignity and freedom. Sitting down with a very nice young lady, Leslie, I opened my new account. I'd studied this phenomenon, done my homework. Respected friends, far more in the financial know than I, told me credit unions are most often locally owned and operated, worked for their members rather than just the stock holders, and that I, indeed, such as I!! actually had a stake in the enterprise! I'd cast my ballots of cash against the tax dodging, foreclosing, blood sucking, CEO bonus taking with my tax money Evil Empire! "Take that you generation of Swine!"
I headed for my next polling place. More ballots to cast. Another statement to make. But this time, it would leave a foul stench my nostrils. I pulled into my local Walmart. Walmart. Was I really going to stoop this low? Pulling my hat down low over my forehead, I hoped no one would recognize me as I passed through the door, a pilgrim in an unholy land.
Yes, this was one of those hold-my-nose choices I had to make, despised though it was. Walmart has a long history of discriminating against women, and generally of treating their employees as chattle. And here was my moral dilemma. I have a choice to make. I can spend a few bucks here, cast a few cash ballots, and have a few left over to put into the collection plate on Sunday morning where God knows my church, not to mention other charities I support, needs such little as I can give. The choices we face on election day are not always pretty, nor easy. The electoral politics of the market place are rarely pure as the driven snow. Nothing high minded about this, I thought as once again I plunked down my hard earned debit card.
In America, every day is election day. Some choices are more good than bad, others more bad than good. There are always choices. And all choices are in between choices. No ballot I cast is without taint of moral ambiguity. Despite most everything I read these days, I'm sure the big banks, and even Walmart, do a little good every now and then. Even if it's no more than providing a decent job to some of my neighbors while saving me a few bucks to give to causes I really believe in.
Another election day has passed. Having cast my ballots, I return home where I will get online and puruse the daily records of humanities' endless struggle to find, let alone do, the right thing. This is not unimportant, though I often find it infuriating. There's war going on. A war in which, like it or not, I am a combatant. A war declared by the rich against the rest of us. A war of budgets that take from those who can least afford it, and give to those who already have more than their fair share. Daily we read of it's disasters and the hooray for me and to hell with you battles.
Naysayers will tell you it doesn't mean shit to Wells Fargo/Wachovia or any of the rest of the big banks that one guy moves a few hundred bucks out of their coffers. They lie. What if the one gets multiplied by a million? ten million? tens of millions? An avalanche starts with the slipping of a single stone. Movements that bring down tyrants begin with one pissed off sister who decides she's mad as hell and isn't going to take this lying down.
Goliath is big, but he doesn't always win. Every once in a while, we David's get to strike a blow for the little guys.
Mahalo,
The Jawbone
What? You missed it? You missed election day? You didn't vote? Well, no, you didn't miss it. And you did vote, several times, a dozen times, more than a dozen, maybe a thousand, or more. In America, every day is election day. Here lately, I've been trying to choose my polling places with a bit more discretion. Growing up in the sixties, the only child of Kennedy Democrats, I was taught that voting was a sacred act, not all that different from going to church.
This particular morning I was certain of doing the right thing. I headed for my local Wachovia Bank branch, today's first stop on my tour of local polling places. A bit nervous, I exited my very used old dodge and headed for the door. Would this be the gunfight at the OK coral? What would I say when they asked, as they surely would, "Why are you closing your account?"
How could I keep my cool? How could I keep from launching into a two-hundred page dissertation detailing the long list of faults and crimes against human dignity of which I found this foul establishment guilty as charged? These are good people who work here. They are not the enemy. The real enemy is far more subtle, more hidden behind cloaks of respectability. These are my neighbors who, as Lama Surya Das reminds me in his Prayer for the New Millennium, "want and need as I do." The criminals I'm after live in gated communities, guarded by rent-a-cops, meet in suites, ride in limos, and, not having to work three jobs waiting tables to make ends meet, usually tip quite poorly.
I approached a nice looking lady at the counter, handed her my check and said, "I'd like to close this account, please." I didn't want trouble. But then, here it came. "I'm sorry, sir. But I can't do that. You'll need to speak to the manager." Careful, I thought to myself. Breathe. Don't reach for that verbal six gun. Repeat. "She's not the enemy... She's not the enemy..." The last time I felt like this was upon many of the occasions in high school when I got kicked out of class and sent to the dean's office. Once again, referred to a higher power for judgment.
With trepidation, I approached the manager's desk, took my seat, and stated yet again the cause for my visit. "I'd like to close this account." She smiled. Good. Maybe this won't be so difficult. She took my info, then the fun started. Here it came. The question. The opportunity to state my case. Would I follow through, or wimp out? "Why are you closing your account?" A moment of pride, courage welled from the depths of my battered consumer soul. I sat up straight, looked into her eyes, and delivered the big one: "Because of Wells Fargo/Wachovia's disproportionate support of the Republican Party and it's policies."
The poor woman could not have looked more surprised had I leaned over the desk and slapped her across the face with a wet and slightly rotten flounder. Ah, I thought. I've landed a point. A moment of awkward silence ensued. "I'm sorry," she said. "Did you say you're closing your account because we don't support the Republican Party enough?" Prior to this moment, I'd always thought I spoke fluent English. Apparently not. Pulling another smelly flounder from my bag, I sallied forth with another attempt. "No. I'm moving my money because this bank disproportionately supports a political party, the Republican Party, whose agenda and policies I am vehemently opposed to." There, I thought. That's got to do it. We have a meeting of the minds.
Reaching for her mouse, she scrolled down her screen, befuddled, taken aback. How to record this frontal assault, this arrogance, this act of defiance of the establishment status quo upon my permanent record? More awkward silence. The system didn't allow for this impertinance. Surely, she must have thought, these things do not happen in civilized society. No one defies the mighty Wells Fargo/Wachovia Empire! She breached the silence that had fallen between us. "I guess I'm just going to have to check other."
Out the door, smiling, I'd made my statement, defied the status quo, struck a blow against the establishment. This must be the kick ass feeling King David had when he let fly the stone that slew Goliath!
Down the street I flew to Freedom First Credit Union, where I struck a second blow for human dignity and freedom. Sitting down with a very nice young lady, Leslie, I opened my new account. I'd studied this phenomenon, done my homework. Respected friends, far more in the financial know than I, told me credit unions are most often locally owned and operated, worked for their members rather than just the stock holders, and that I, indeed, such as I!! actually had a stake in the enterprise! I'd cast my ballots of cash against the tax dodging, foreclosing, blood sucking, CEO bonus taking with my tax money Evil Empire! "Take that you generation of Swine!"
I headed for my next polling place. More ballots to cast. Another statement to make. But this time, it would leave a foul stench my nostrils. I pulled into my local Walmart. Walmart. Was I really going to stoop this low? Pulling my hat down low over my forehead, I hoped no one would recognize me as I passed through the door, a pilgrim in an unholy land.
Yes, this was one of those hold-my-nose choices I had to make, despised though it was. Walmart has a long history of discriminating against women, and generally of treating their employees as chattle. And here was my moral dilemma. I have a choice to make. I can spend a few bucks here, cast a few cash ballots, and have a few left over to put into the collection plate on Sunday morning where God knows my church, not to mention other charities I support, needs such little as I can give. The choices we face on election day are not always pretty, nor easy. The electoral politics of the market place are rarely pure as the driven snow. Nothing high minded about this, I thought as once again I plunked down my hard earned debit card.
In America, every day is election day. Some choices are more good than bad, others more bad than good. There are always choices. And all choices are in between choices. No ballot I cast is without taint of moral ambiguity. Despite most everything I read these days, I'm sure the big banks, and even Walmart, do a little good every now and then. Even if it's no more than providing a decent job to some of my neighbors while saving me a few bucks to give to causes I really believe in.
Another election day has passed. Having cast my ballots, I return home where I will get online and puruse the daily records of humanities' endless struggle to find, let alone do, the right thing. This is not unimportant, though I often find it infuriating. There's war going on. A war in which, like it or not, I am a combatant. A war declared by the rich against the rest of us. A war of budgets that take from those who can least afford it, and give to those who already have more than their fair share. Daily we read of it's disasters and the hooray for me and to hell with you battles.
Naysayers will tell you it doesn't mean shit to Wells Fargo/Wachovia or any of the rest of the big banks that one guy moves a few hundred bucks out of their coffers. They lie. What if the one gets multiplied by a million? ten million? tens of millions? An avalanche starts with the slipping of a single stone. Movements that bring down tyrants begin with one pissed off sister who decides she's mad as hell and isn't going to take this lying down.
Goliath is big, but he doesn't always win. Every once in a while, we David's get to strike a blow for the little guys.
Mahalo,
The Jawbone
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Death of a Terrorist: Is the Celebration Misplaced?
"Being rational and free, human beings are capable of being diabolic. This is a feat which no animal can duplicate, for no animal is sufficiently clever, sufficiently purposeful, sufficiently strong-willed or sufficiently moral to be a devil." (The Perennial Philosophy, p. 229, Aldous Huxley)
Dancing in the streets. Waving the flag. Boisterous gatherings from Times Square to Pennsylvania Ave. to L.A. and everywhere main street USA. Understandable. Let us be clear. There is no doubt evil in this world of ours. Evil that must be confronted, and, when absolutely necessary, eliminated. Such is part and parcel of the tragedy of human existence. Caution, however, should prevail. Let us not be overzealous. Zealots, it seems, are always blind.
I remember where I was when word came that JFK had been shot in Dallas. Mrs. Trinko's seventh grade American History class at Breckenridge Jr. High School. I was sitting behind Cathy Webb when another teacher knocked on the door, entered, and gave us the news.
When you're in the seventh grade, there's not enough lived experience to allow you to process such an event. I doubt most of us could even have spelled assassination. In a moment everything changed. We'd felt safe, but now, who knew if we were safe or not? I remembered my Dad telling my Mom one night in a conversation they thought I couldn't hear from my bedroom down the hall. "If the sirens go off, take Alan, and go downstairs to the shelter." Was that what was coming? Was it time to "duck and cover?" This was the moment that defined our generation.
Flash forward. September 11, 2001. The event that began to define my daughters' generation. I was probably one of the last people to find out what had happened. We were living in NH, and, as we all remember, it was a beautiful day. I got up, looked out the window, flipped on Surf Line, heard the waves were up--storm surge--tossed my board and wet suit in the back of the truck and made for the coast. An hour and a half before mid-tide. I could get there just in time.
Beaches in NH and ME, especially those frequented by surfers, are rocky and somewhat secluded. What summer crowds we are plagued with are gone by then. We rode for a couple hours, then just hung out, enjoying the day. Pease air base was just down the road. Huge tankers lumbered in and out every hour or so. Nothing unusual. A little body surfing on the low stuff and I decided to head home. 4:30 in the afternoon. Tossed the gear in back of the truck, headed out, and flipped on "All Things Considered." The coastal route 1A is lined with some pretty fancy digs, and I wondered why all the flags were at half-staff. It didn't take long to find out.
"Do you think an anti-missile system would have helped New York?" or some such thoughts were the first words I heard. To call this a WTF moment is an understatement. First thought: Somebody finally dropped the big one. Second thought: Is NYC still there? If memory serves, it was a good ten to fifteen minutes before they got around to repeating the headline. About the time I answered my cell to discover my wife, sobbing, had been trying to get in touch with me all day. "This isn't over, is it? It's not going to stop, is it?" was all she could get out.
As the horrors of the day were played again and again and again that night, I remember thinking how close to the brink we were. "What does it mean, Daddy? Is there going to be a war?"
I'd grown up with a Dad in defense, with dinner table stories of what the inside of Cheyenne Mountain looked like, bomb shelters in back yards and basements, the Cuban Missile Crisis. It meant our jets were in the air, our submarines at launch depth, missile crews out in the Montana desert on high alert. Nervous fingers on hair triggers. Nobody on either side of the ocean slept well that night. But we all woke up to a different world, again....
Fast forward. Okay. Ten years after. Got the bad guy. "Justice has been served." True enough, I suppose. And we didn't wipe out half a continent in the process. So maybe in some tragic way it's a step forward. But I think we disrespect 9/11 if we don't look a little deeper than that.
Violence, wrote Reinhold Niebuhr, is not limited to the use of the knife or the gun. The overt violence of the knife or gun is but an outward manifesting of the more subtle violence of real or perceived injustices to our fellows, to nature, and our willed separation from the Divine Source of Our Being.
Returning to Huxley on human suffering, at length: "The truth is, of course, that we are all organically related to God, to Nature, and to our fellow men. If every human being were constantly and consciously in a proper relationship with his divine, natural and social environments there would be only so much suffering as Creation makes inevitable. But actually most human beings are chronically in an improper relation to God, Nature and some at least of their fellows. The results of these wrong relationships are manifest on the social level as wars, revolutions, exploitation and disorder; on the natural level, as waste and exhaustion of irreplaceable resources; on the biological level, as degenerative diseases and the deterioration of racial stocks; on the moral level, as an overweening bumptiousness; and on the spiritual level, as blindness to divine Reality and complete ignorance of the reason and purpose of human existence." (p. 233.)
As Huxley is careful to point out, this is a fundamental truth of every religious expression; true for the Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Christian or obscure aboriginal tribesman. Everything stands or falls apart on proper relationship.
More precisely, if we are truly concerned about the violence of the gun and the knife; we cannot be content merely to trade eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. We have to go deeper than that and look at the root causes of suffering and address those issues such as economic inequality, poverty, and the insidious darkness that one finds in every religious fanatic--the tendency to elevate my faith to a position of absolute rightness against and above all others. More violence has been visited upon humankind in the name of that absurdity than any other. Killing in the name of God has to be the ultimate expression of human evil.
Is this celebration a bit misplaced? Probably. At least it's a bit too exuberant for my comfort. If only because so much of what I hear in the streets seems less a celebration of justice served and more of revenge carried out.
Ten years after. Okay. Got the bad guy. Now where do we go?
Dancing in the streets. Waving the flag. Boisterous gatherings from Times Square to Pennsylvania Ave. to L.A. and everywhere main street USA. Understandable. Let us be clear. There is no doubt evil in this world of ours. Evil that must be confronted, and, when absolutely necessary, eliminated. Such is part and parcel of the tragedy of human existence. Caution, however, should prevail. Let us not be overzealous. Zealots, it seems, are always blind.
I remember where I was when word came that JFK had been shot in Dallas. Mrs. Trinko's seventh grade American History class at Breckenridge Jr. High School. I was sitting behind Cathy Webb when another teacher knocked on the door, entered, and gave us the news.
When you're in the seventh grade, there's not enough lived experience to allow you to process such an event. I doubt most of us could even have spelled assassination. In a moment everything changed. We'd felt safe, but now, who knew if we were safe or not? I remembered my Dad telling my Mom one night in a conversation they thought I couldn't hear from my bedroom down the hall. "If the sirens go off, take Alan, and go downstairs to the shelter." Was that what was coming? Was it time to "duck and cover?" This was the moment that defined our generation.
Flash forward. September 11, 2001. The event that began to define my daughters' generation. I was probably one of the last people to find out what had happened. We were living in NH, and, as we all remember, it was a beautiful day. I got up, looked out the window, flipped on Surf Line, heard the waves were up--storm surge--tossed my board and wet suit in the back of the truck and made for the coast. An hour and a half before mid-tide. I could get there just in time.
Beaches in NH and ME, especially those frequented by surfers, are rocky and somewhat secluded. What summer crowds we are plagued with are gone by then. We rode for a couple hours, then just hung out, enjoying the day. Pease air base was just down the road. Huge tankers lumbered in and out every hour or so. Nothing unusual. A little body surfing on the low stuff and I decided to head home. 4:30 in the afternoon. Tossed the gear in back of the truck, headed out, and flipped on "All Things Considered." The coastal route 1A is lined with some pretty fancy digs, and I wondered why all the flags were at half-staff. It didn't take long to find out.
"Do you think an anti-missile system would have helped New York?" or some such thoughts were the first words I heard. To call this a WTF moment is an understatement. First thought: Somebody finally dropped the big one. Second thought: Is NYC still there? If memory serves, it was a good ten to fifteen minutes before they got around to repeating the headline. About the time I answered my cell to discover my wife, sobbing, had been trying to get in touch with me all day. "This isn't over, is it? It's not going to stop, is it?" was all she could get out.
As the horrors of the day were played again and again and again that night, I remember thinking how close to the brink we were. "What does it mean, Daddy? Is there going to be a war?"
I'd grown up with a Dad in defense, with dinner table stories of what the inside of Cheyenne Mountain looked like, bomb shelters in back yards and basements, the Cuban Missile Crisis. It meant our jets were in the air, our submarines at launch depth, missile crews out in the Montana desert on high alert. Nervous fingers on hair triggers. Nobody on either side of the ocean slept well that night. But we all woke up to a different world, again....
Fast forward. Okay. Ten years after. Got the bad guy. "Justice has been served." True enough, I suppose. And we didn't wipe out half a continent in the process. So maybe in some tragic way it's a step forward. But I think we disrespect 9/11 if we don't look a little deeper than that.
Violence, wrote Reinhold Niebuhr, is not limited to the use of the knife or the gun. The overt violence of the knife or gun is but an outward manifesting of the more subtle violence of real or perceived injustices to our fellows, to nature, and our willed separation from the Divine Source of Our Being.
Returning to Huxley on human suffering, at length: "The truth is, of course, that we are all organically related to God, to Nature, and to our fellow men. If every human being were constantly and consciously in a proper relationship with his divine, natural and social environments there would be only so much suffering as Creation makes inevitable. But actually most human beings are chronically in an improper relation to God, Nature and some at least of their fellows. The results of these wrong relationships are manifest on the social level as wars, revolutions, exploitation and disorder; on the natural level, as waste and exhaustion of irreplaceable resources; on the biological level, as degenerative diseases and the deterioration of racial stocks; on the moral level, as an overweening bumptiousness; and on the spiritual level, as blindness to divine Reality and complete ignorance of the reason and purpose of human existence." (p. 233.)
As Huxley is careful to point out, this is a fundamental truth of every religious expression; true for the Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Christian or obscure aboriginal tribesman. Everything stands or falls apart on proper relationship.
More precisely, if we are truly concerned about the violence of the gun and the knife; we cannot be content merely to trade eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. We have to go deeper than that and look at the root causes of suffering and address those issues such as economic inequality, poverty, and the insidious darkness that one finds in every religious fanatic--the tendency to elevate my faith to a position of absolute rightness against and above all others. More violence has been visited upon humankind in the name of that absurdity than any other. Killing in the name of God has to be the ultimate expression of human evil.
Is this celebration a bit misplaced? Probably. At least it's a bit too exuberant for my comfort. If only because so much of what I hear in the streets seems less a celebration of justice served and more of revenge carried out.
Ten years after. Okay. Got the bad guy. Now where do we go?
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Rich vs. Poor: Does God Take Sides?
In the ongoing struggle between the haves and have nots, people of faith need to ask, "Does God take sides?" Which does God favor? The Rich? The Poor? Or can God be said to "take sides" at all? How could we begin the search for an answer?
First a caveat. I've long thought there cannot be meaningful dialogue on any issue of faith until the parties involved come to some basically agreed upon understanding of what the word, "God," means. And there are myriad definitions. Eric Rust, my former philosophy professor, illustrated the dilemma thus: A professor was walking down the sidewalk when he passed an alley and overheard a tremendous ruckus from the windows above. Two women were hanging out of their windows, each shouting across the urban abyss from their respective apartments. Each was certain of her rectitude. Neither harbored a doubt as to the self-righteousness of her opinion. Having listened for a moment, the good professor looked to a fellow passer-by and said, "These two will never agree. They argue from different premises."
I've spent more than forty years in search of my own understanding of what the word "God" means. My early church years were spent in the Southern Baptist Church of my parents. Decades later, I describe myself, when I must, as an Episcopalian Tibetan Buddhist with slight Jewish and, to a lesser extent, Hindu leanings, who, on certain days of the week when the wind is right, enjoys reading Native American earth-centered spirituality and other sources to numerous to mention here. The more I've learned the less I'm sure of. To me, that's a good thing. "God" is a big word. And personal experience has taught me that whenever I have the misfortune of meeting anyone who is sure they have definitive knowledge of who and what the word "God" means is to run, not walk, mind you, but flee in haste in another direction. So I gladly accept the ambiguity of the term. As Jesus said to the rich young ruler, "Go thou, and do likewise."
For today, though, I'll stick with Jesus. He had his own distinct view of "God" and wished to broaden his followers understanding. His day was not entirely like our own. Poor equals not so good, not so fortunate, bad. Rich equals good, fortunate. More than a few thought that if you were rich it was a sign of God's favor. Poor, that meant the opposite. God didn't like you very much. Jesus turned this common understanding on it's head.
In Luke's Gospel (6:20-) we find, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." Most of us have heard that so long it's lost it's impact. Allow me to help us regain the offensiveness of Jesus. Blessed are you when Bank of America files improper paperwork so they can foreclose on your house a few months sooner than the law allows. Blessed are you when your unemployment benefits run out. Blessed are you when your child is one of the seven living below the poverty line. Blessed are you when you are over fifty-five, out of work for two years, and not likely to ever, and I mean ever get a job making close to what you used to make. Blessed are you when you get evicted from your apartment. Shall I continue?
What's going on here? Well, the most I've ever been able to figure out is that being blessed has something to do with where God, as Jesus understood the word, puts God's primary concerns. To be blessed means to be the object of God's concern, God's interest, the focus of God's benevolent intentions, of grace. I'll be the first to tell you knowing that doesn't keep you from being an object of foreclosure, or pay your electric bill. At least it didn't work for me. What it does mean is that Jesus would like us to know that we're not alone.
There is Presence to sustain us, and, ultimately and most importantly, Presence to help us in the ongoing struggle for economic justice. The kingdom, the Presence, belongs to those who are the most in need of economic justice in an economically lopsided world. There's hope because God cares; at precisely the time your house is being foreclosed on; exactly when it feels like no one in government gives a shit about you or your kids or whether your mom's already inadequate social security is going to become even more inadequate.
As in contrast with the rich. "Woe to you who are rich," he says a couple of sentences later. Enjoy what you've got because it's the only thing you've got and that's pretty much going to be it. Deal with it because God is, apparently, not very pleased with the way you're running things. God is concerned with the poor. The rich, well, not so much...
This gives me a bit of hope, and, I must mischievously confess, more than a little to grin about as I reflect on the fact that I, who just returned from H and R Block, paid more federal taxes than GE, Exxon-Mobil, Bank of America, and quite probably more than a few fat cats sitting in the top two percent of our rich-getting-richer-while-the-poor-get-poorer society.
This on a day when, just after I got up, I walked into the kitchen and for the first time in my nearly sixty years on this earth heard my mother suggest a congressman should be taken into the streets and shot. Mom, it turns out, seems to have taken offense at Congressman Ryan's budget offerings. She was, of course, speaking facetiously. I think. Still, I paused for a moment of thanks that when dad died my cousin took all the guns to his house. Hell hath no furry like a mom who reads congressman Ryan and his Party-of-the-Rich colleagues are going to reduce her Social Security, her Medicare, and worthy social programs like Medicaid and Women Infants and Children. Talk about reading a budget as a moral document! I mean, Jesus Christ!....
Exactly....
What would Jesus, the Jesus who, poor himself, taught that the destitute are blessed and the rich, not so much, have to say about congressman Ryan's budget? Or any budget that favors the wealthy with tax cuts and corporations with zero tax liability while supporting an out of control military/industrial/congressional war machine?
Maybe God, as Jesus understood Her/Him/It does take sides in the sense that God has God's concerns. And for those of us who would try to take Jesus seriously, might that not mean that we should adopt Jesus' concerns as our own? Shouldn't our focus be on caring for the health and well-being of the ninety-eight percent of us who live in that Social Security Medicare Hourly-wage Medicaid and Middle Class enclave called the United States where 27 million are under or unemployed? 50 million without health insurance? public education remains underfunded? corporations get wealthier while their workers still can't get a decent pay raise?
The wealthy are not without hope. St. Paul, writing to Timothy (I Timothy 6-): "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant (Are you listening, Donald?) nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life." Are you listening Mr. Congressman? Mr. Senator? Mr. President?
So much for the unrestrained sins of laiessez-faire capitalism. When the rich young ruler asked what else he could do, Jesus told him to go sell everything he'd accumulated, give the proceeds to poverty relief, and follow him. The story ends there. We're never told whether the young man did, or didn't. Only that he went away sorrowfully, because he had many possessions.
People of faith need to choose. We need to take sides. And it would seem to me that the side we need to take, the concerns we need to adopt as our own political and economic and social agenda are those of Jesus. And in his economy, the rich don't seem to fair very well.
Mahalo, (Feel free to tweet and facebook)
Alan
First a caveat. I've long thought there cannot be meaningful dialogue on any issue of faith until the parties involved come to some basically agreed upon understanding of what the word, "God," means. And there are myriad definitions. Eric Rust, my former philosophy professor, illustrated the dilemma thus: A professor was walking down the sidewalk when he passed an alley and overheard a tremendous ruckus from the windows above. Two women were hanging out of their windows, each shouting across the urban abyss from their respective apartments. Each was certain of her rectitude. Neither harbored a doubt as to the self-righteousness of her opinion. Having listened for a moment, the good professor looked to a fellow passer-by and said, "These two will never agree. They argue from different premises."
I've spent more than forty years in search of my own understanding of what the word "God" means. My early church years were spent in the Southern Baptist Church of my parents. Decades later, I describe myself, when I must, as an Episcopalian Tibetan Buddhist with slight Jewish and, to a lesser extent, Hindu leanings, who, on certain days of the week when the wind is right, enjoys reading Native American earth-centered spirituality and other sources to numerous to mention here. The more I've learned the less I'm sure of. To me, that's a good thing. "God" is a big word. And personal experience has taught me that whenever I have the misfortune of meeting anyone who is sure they have definitive knowledge of who and what the word "God" means is to run, not walk, mind you, but flee in haste in another direction. So I gladly accept the ambiguity of the term. As Jesus said to the rich young ruler, "Go thou, and do likewise."
For today, though, I'll stick with Jesus. He had his own distinct view of "God" and wished to broaden his followers understanding. His day was not entirely like our own. Poor equals not so good, not so fortunate, bad. Rich equals good, fortunate. More than a few thought that if you were rich it was a sign of God's favor. Poor, that meant the opposite. God didn't like you very much. Jesus turned this common understanding on it's head.
In Luke's Gospel (6:20-) we find, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." Most of us have heard that so long it's lost it's impact. Allow me to help us regain the offensiveness of Jesus. Blessed are you when Bank of America files improper paperwork so they can foreclose on your house a few months sooner than the law allows. Blessed are you when your unemployment benefits run out. Blessed are you when your child is one of the seven living below the poverty line. Blessed are you when you are over fifty-five, out of work for two years, and not likely to ever, and I mean ever get a job making close to what you used to make. Blessed are you when you get evicted from your apartment. Shall I continue?
What's going on here? Well, the most I've ever been able to figure out is that being blessed has something to do with where God, as Jesus understood the word, puts God's primary concerns. To be blessed means to be the object of God's concern, God's interest, the focus of God's benevolent intentions, of grace. I'll be the first to tell you knowing that doesn't keep you from being an object of foreclosure, or pay your electric bill. At least it didn't work for me. What it does mean is that Jesus would like us to know that we're not alone.
There is Presence to sustain us, and, ultimately and most importantly, Presence to help us in the ongoing struggle for economic justice. The kingdom, the Presence, belongs to those who are the most in need of economic justice in an economically lopsided world. There's hope because God cares; at precisely the time your house is being foreclosed on; exactly when it feels like no one in government gives a shit about you or your kids or whether your mom's already inadequate social security is going to become even more inadequate.
As in contrast with the rich. "Woe to you who are rich," he says a couple of sentences later. Enjoy what you've got because it's the only thing you've got and that's pretty much going to be it. Deal with it because God is, apparently, not very pleased with the way you're running things. God is concerned with the poor. The rich, well, not so much...
This gives me a bit of hope, and, I must mischievously confess, more than a little to grin about as I reflect on the fact that I, who just returned from H and R Block, paid more federal taxes than GE, Exxon-Mobil, Bank of America, and quite probably more than a few fat cats sitting in the top two percent of our rich-getting-richer-while-the-poor-get-poorer society.
This on a day when, just after I got up, I walked into the kitchen and for the first time in my nearly sixty years on this earth heard my mother suggest a congressman should be taken into the streets and shot. Mom, it turns out, seems to have taken offense at Congressman Ryan's budget offerings. She was, of course, speaking facetiously. I think. Still, I paused for a moment of thanks that when dad died my cousin took all the guns to his house. Hell hath no furry like a mom who reads congressman Ryan and his Party-of-the-Rich colleagues are going to reduce her Social Security, her Medicare, and worthy social programs like Medicaid and Women Infants and Children. Talk about reading a budget as a moral document! I mean, Jesus Christ!....
Exactly....
What would Jesus, the Jesus who, poor himself, taught that the destitute are blessed and the rich, not so much, have to say about congressman Ryan's budget? Or any budget that favors the wealthy with tax cuts and corporations with zero tax liability while supporting an out of control military/industrial/congressional war machine?
Maybe God, as Jesus understood Her/Him/It does take sides in the sense that God has God's concerns. And for those of us who would try to take Jesus seriously, might that not mean that we should adopt Jesus' concerns as our own? Shouldn't our focus be on caring for the health and well-being of the ninety-eight percent of us who live in that Social Security Medicare Hourly-wage Medicaid and Middle Class enclave called the United States where 27 million are under or unemployed? 50 million without health insurance? public education remains underfunded? corporations get wealthier while their workers still can't get a decent pay raise?
The wealthy are not without hope. St. Paul, writing to Timothy (I Timothy 6-): "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant (Are you listening, Donald?) nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life." Are you listening Mr. Congressman? Mr. Senator? Mr. President?
So much for the unrestrained sins of laiessez-faire capitalism. When the rich young ruler asked what else he could do, Jesus told him to go sell everything he'd accumulated, give the proceeds to poverty relief, and follow him. The story ends there. We're never told whether the young man did, or didn't. Only that he went away sorrowfully, because he had many possessions.
People of faith need to choose. We need to take sides. And it would seem to me that the side we need to take, the concerns we need to adopt as our own political and economic and social agenda are those of Jesus. And in his economy, the rich don't seem to fair very well.
Mahalo, (Feel free to tweet and facebook)
Alan
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
United Health Group; Bank of America; Lisbeth Salander; Anonymous
Meet Lisbeth Salander, heroine of the late Stieg Larson's Millennium Trilogy; three novels, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. A world-wide publishing phenomenon like none before.
Salander sits in a pitch dark, scantily furnished apartment. She has been victimized, abused, physically, emotionally, economically, betrayed by almost everyone she thought she could trust. She's angry, and has every right to be. The only light in the room is the faint green glow that emanates from the only weapon she can fight back with--her laptop. In her hands, and in the hands of her compatriots buried deeply in cyberspace, the secret network of those dedicated to bringing their own brand of vigilante justice to the bad guys, it proves more formidable than any firearm. Lisbeth is a super hacker. And she may be a literary heroine for our time.
************
Meet Anonymous. The real life version of Lisbeth and her associates. Anonymous and friends managed to get inside Bank of American, no paragon of financial honesty, and not only uncover but expose for all the world to see yet another one of the many, many frauds BofA has long been known to perpetrate on its unknowing customers.
Nice going, folks. Many thanks from those of us who don't have your gifts of stealth. Those of us tax payers who are sick and tired of being abused, lied to, financially screwed over in every way imaginable. Thanks especially from those who lost their homes to foreclosure while BofA filed improper paperwork, not giving the working stiffs who are busting their asses everyday for hourly wage a chance to just maybe save the roof over their heads. Let's hope there's Hell to pay.
BofA, isn't alone. We've read the news. Citibank. Morgan-Stanley. Chase. The list of criminals goes on. Crime in the street will get you locked up. Crime in the suite will get you a fine bonus. We're putting the wrong people in jail. The execs in these companies should have a room beside Mr. Madoff, who, it's interesting to note, now says, "Of course the bank knew about it. They had too!"
And BofA has the temerity to cry "Foul!" when Anonymous raises the cyber rock and shines the light of day into the darkness where these roaches scurry for cover. I understand there may be a few laws against getting into someone else's computer. But what if, on the other hand, the only way to expose the criminals is to break a couple of rules yourself? Interesting question. Maybe the cyber ethics question of our time.
************
Getting from the outside to the inside to expose the bad guys breaks one set of rules. But there's another rule breaker, one even more feared by those in the corporate world who want us to look the other way while they stack the deck against those of us who work rather than steal for a living. The guy who breaks the rules from the inside. The whistleblower. The list of heroes abounds.
Remember a few years back, when those good folks down at the tobacco companies swore on their mother's graves that they weren't boosting the nicotine in their already deadly products to increase addiction? "Trust us," they said. "We'd never do anything like that. It would be illegal, not to mention immoral." So one guy with a conscience steps out of the darkness into the light with the documents to prove tobacco execs had been lying all along.
Then there's Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker of Pentagon documents to WikiLeaks. He's not the first, of course. Those of my vintage will remember the Pentagon Papers. Right now he's sitting in a military jail. I think the guy deserves a medal.
Since I've started writing about my time spent in the belly of the healthcare beast--United Health Group--I've heard from all sorts of people who've blown their own whistles. Lest anyone jump in on UHGs side, let's be clear: this is a company that was fined fifty million back in 2009 for underpaying claims, more than a few for those struggling with cancer. One, Jerome, interviewed on the Today Show, pointed out how, just when you've fought with everything inside you just to stay alive, UHG refuses to pay up. Check out "Today's" archives. It's a story worth keeping alive, and one UHG would rather we forget about.
Just Google United Health Group, click on complaints, and start reading the plethora of information from patients, from lawyers, the lawsuits, the fraud. But due to the power of the internet, we just may be getting to a place where it's more and more difficult for the pepetrators of these moral and civil crimes to find a flat rock to hide under.
Welcome to the Age of Transparency, when any person of conscience has the power to stand up in the middle of the parade and say, "The CEO has no clothes!!"
Micah L. Sifry, in "The End of Secrecy," writes: "...the reason the recent confrontation between WikiLeaks and the US government is a pivotal event is that, unlike these other applications of technology to politics, this time the free flow of information is threatening the establishment with difficult questions." (The Nation, March 21st edition) Much of what Sifry says about government secrecy and WikiLeaks is equally applicable to the corporate secret keepers. Indeed, the military, corporate, Congressional/government complex is all part and parcel of the same entity dedicated to nothing but it's own survival and the keeping of privilege--mostly at our expense.
"...they (the government) probably understand that the conditions for maintaining their monopoly on critical information have been broken. But they apparently still hope that the next Bradley Manning... will be dissuaded from an act of conscience if he believes either that the personal cost will be too high or that his actions won't make a difference... neither approach will work, as long as millions of other government (and, I would add, corporate) employees have access to the information..."
"The threat of massive leaks," says Max Frankel, former New York Times editor, "will persist so long as there are massive secrets."
"If all it takes," writes Sifry," is one person with a USB drive, the 'least trusted person' whose conscience may be pricked by a contradiction in his or her government's (or corporation's) behavior, that information can move into public view more easily than ever before. That is the reality of the twenty-first century."
Bank of American, United Health Group, the Pentagon; no one need fear the Age of Transparency, unless, of course, they happen to be committing fraud, theft, or some other crime. What they do need is to keep in mind that the game has changed. We, like Lisbeth, like Anonymous, like any whistleblower on the inside, have a new and powerful weapon in our arsenal. And it's only a click away.
Inside? Got the goods? Let's see 'em. Darkness fears nothing more than light.
Facebook this....
Mahalo
Salander sits in a pitch dark, scantily furnished apartment. She has been victimized, abused, physically, emotionally, economically, betrayed by almost everyone she thought she could trust. She's angry, and has every right to be. The only light in the room is the faint green glow that emanates from the only weapon she can fight back with--her laptop. In her hands, and in the hands of her compatriots buried deeply in cyberspace, the secret network of those dedicated to bringing their own brand of vigilante justice to the bad guys, it proves more formidable than any firearm. Lisbeth is a super hacker. And she may be a literary heroine for our time.
************
Meet Anonymous. The real life version of Lisbeth and her associates. Anonymous and friends managed to get inside Bank of American, no paragon of financial honesty, and not only uncover but expose for all the world to see yet another one of the many, many frauds BofA has long been known to perpetrate on its unknowing customers.
Nice going, folks. Many thanks from those of us who don't have your gifts of stealth. Those of us tax payers who are sick and tired of being abused, lied to, financially screwed over in every way imaginable. Thanks especially from those who lost their homes to foreclosure while BofA filed improper paperwork, not giving the working stiffs who are busting their asses everyday for hourly wage a chance to just maybe save the roof over their heads. Let's hope there's Hell to pay.
BofA, isn't alone. We've read the news. Citibank. Morgan-Stanley. Chase. The list of criminals goes on. Crime in the street will get you locked up. Crime in the suite will get you a fine bonus. We're putting the wrong people in jail. The execs in these companies should have a room beside Mr. Madoff, who, it's interesting to note, now says, "Of course the bank knew about it. They had too!"
And BofA has the temerity to cry "Foul!" when Anonymous raises the cyber rock and shines the light of day into the darkness where these roaches scurry for cover. I understand there may be a few laws against getting into someone else's computer. But what if, on the other hand, the only way to expose the criminals is to break a couple of rules yourself? Interesting question. Maybe the cyber ethics question of our time.
************
Getting from the outside to the inside to expose the bad guys breaks one set of rules. But there's another rule breaker, one even more feared by those in the corporate world who want us to look the other way while they stack the deck against those of us who work rather than steal for a living. The guy who breaks the rules from the inside. The whistleblower. The list of heroes abounds.
Remember a few years back, when those good folks down at the tobacco companies swore on their mother's graves that they weren't boosting the nicotine in their already deadly products to increase addiction? "Trust us," they said. "We'd never do anything like that. It would be illegal, not to mention immoral." So one guy with a conscience steps out of the darkness into the light with the documents to prove tobacco execs had been lying all along.
Then there's Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker of Pentagon documents to WikiLeaks. He's not the first, of course. Those of my vintage will remember the Pentagon Papers. Right now he's sitting in a military jail. I think the guy deserves a medal.
Since I've started writing about my time spent in the belly of the healthcare beast--United Health Group--I've heard from all sorts of people who've blown their own whistles. Lest anyone jump in on UHGs side, let's be clear: this is a company that was fined fifty million back in 2009 for underpaying claims, more than a few for those struggling with cancer. One, Jerome, interviewed on the Today Show, pointed out how, just when you've fought with everything inside you just to stay alive, UHG refuses to pay up. Check out "Today's" archives. It's a story worth keeping alive, and one UHG would rather we forget about.
Just Google United Health Group, click on complaints, and start reading the plethora of information from patients, from lawyers, the lawsuits, the fraud. But due to the power of the internet, we just may be getting to a place where it's more and more difficult for the pepetrators of these moral and civil crimes to find a flat rock to hide under.
Welcome to the Age of Transparency, when any person of conscience has the power to stand up in the middle of the parade and say, "The CEO has no clothes!!"
Micah L. Sifry, in "The End of Secrecy," writes: "...the reason the recent confrontation between WikiLeaks and the US government is a pivotal event is that, unlike these other applications of technology to politics, this time the free flow of information is threatening the establishment with difficult questions." (The Nation, March 21st edition) Much of what Sifry says about government secrecy and WikiLeaks is equally applicable to the corporate secret keepers. Indeed, the military, corporate, Congressional/government complex is all part and parcel of the same entity dedicated to nothing but it's own survival and the keeping of privilege--mostly at our expense.
"...they (the government) probably understand that the conditions for maintaining their monopoly on critical information have been broken. But they apparently still hope that the next Bradley Manning... will be dissuaded from an act of conscience if he believes either that the personal cost will be too high or that his actions won't make a difference... neither approach will work, as long as millions of other government (and, I would add, corporate) employees have access to the information..."
"The threat of massive leaks," says Max Frankel, former New York Times editor, "will persist so long as there are massive secrets."
"If all it takes," writes Sifry," is one person with a USB drive, the 'least trusted person' whose conscience may be pricked by a contradiction in his or her government's (or corporation's) behavior, that information can move into public view more easily than ever before. That is the reality of the twenty-first century."
Bank of American, United Health Group, the Pentagon; no one need fear the Age of Transparency, unless, of course, they happen to be committing fraud, theft, or some other crime. What they do need is to keep in mind that the game has changed. We, like Lisbeth, like Anonymous, like any whistleblower on the inside, have a new and powerful weapon in our arsenal. And it's only a click away.
Inside? Got the goods? Let's see 'em. Darkness fears nothing more than light.
Facebook this....
Mahalo
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
UNG; Bank of America; Lisbeth Salander; Anonymous
What could United Healthcare, Bank of America, Lisbeth Salander--for those of you who may have been living on another planet and haven't been home for a while, she's the heroine/anti-heroine known as Steig Larson's, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--and Anonymous, possibly have in common?
Awaiting for a bit more info to arrive... Stay tuned.... There is a thread of commonality here that can be neither dismissed or denied. We may have discovered the most powerful, perhaps the only, available weapon the workers and middle class have left with which to combat the corporate, congressional, military complex.
If you're on the inside.... dump it.
Mahalo
Awaiting for a bit more info to arrive... Stay tuned.... There is a thread of commonality here that can be neither dismissed or denied. We may have discovered the most powerful, perhaps the only, available weapon the workers and middle class have left with which to combat the corporate, congressional, military complex.
If you're on the inside.... dump it.
Mahalo
Friday, February 25, 2011
On Knowing When to Quit: Moral Man, Immoral Society, and United Health
Guess I should begin by saying, "See previous blog," or this won't make sense. Presuming you just did that, or are about to.... here goes with a few thoughts to ponder...
Okay, I realize some of my friends, maybe a lot of them, will read this and say something like, "Jesus, do you really sit around and think about this stuff?" Yea, I do... a lot. Call it a quirk, but then I've always been a bit excentric.
Back near the middle of the last century, Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, Moral Man, Immoral Society. As the title implies, this is a central dilemma any person of faith must wrestle with. How do I live as a moral person in the midst of what is in so many ways an immoral society?
Okay, so "society" is a big subject. Let's break it down. That was essentially the topic of my last blog on United Health Group screwing your grandmother out of her insulin while putting billions in profits into their corporate and executive pockets. I reached the point where, as a Christian/Buddhist person of faith, I could no longer in good conscience justify--live with myself--working at a job where I'm on the phone telling grandma we're not paying the extra fifteen a month her insulin is going up, then attending a sales meeting where top execs are gleeful over UHG having made 2.7 billion last year, not to mention their six figure incomes. So I walked back to my corporate cubbyhole, scooted my chair across the aisle to my super and said, "I don't belong here. You have my notice."
Granted, not everyone can do that; at least, not immediately. The difficulty, however, in finding ethical employment cannot be avoided merely by saying, "times are tough." Being a person of faith demands we continually evaluate whether the way we earn our daily bread comes down more on the side of the moral than immoral side of the equation.
Put a bit differently, when does it become time for a person of faith to tell the corporate plantation owner to, "Take this job and shove it!"
There are no simple answers. I do have to eat. If I have a family, they too have that nasty and getting more expensive by the day habit. And no one can live without seeking shelter from the storm. Freezing to death is not an option. So we find ourselves in a quandry. If I really think what my company is doing is unethical, do I risk everything and quit without another job? Or is my greater responsibility providing food and shelter and college to my kids, even if it means participating in something I think is wrong, if not even--to this in a moment--evil?
This is not merely an academic exercise in splitting ethical hairs. Be absolutely certain, human history can turn on seemingly insignificant acts of defiant morality. Remember the African-American lady who refused to move to the back of the bus? How she inspired some young preacher to take a stand? And those black kids who had the audacity to order and burger and fries at an all-white lunch counter?
Deciding it was time to pursue more ethical employment was, for me, an act of moral defiance. I just decided I couldn't participate in what was happening to our customers any more; especially when I knew what was happening behind the scenes at UHG. I mean, really, couldn't these corporate types help grandma out by at least being willing to split the difference for her increased costs?
Had I stood up in that meeting and said, "Hey, how can you guys justify making all that money when the lady I got off the phone with is going to have to skip a meal to pay for her insulin?" Doubtless I would have gotten the response, "Look, we get it. This isn't personal. It's just business." And there's the problem Niebuhr recognized: As a person of faith it's impossible to separate the personal from the social.
As a person of faith I must share at least some moral responsibility for the impact of the decisions I make on my job. Those decisions effect the rest of humanity. So if you're my boss, don't tell me to quietly go out back and dump toxic chemicals down the city sewer. Poisoning the global water table is a bit much to ask a person of faith to do.
Yet, here again, there's the temptation to say it's just business.... I'm not responsible... Hey, I was just following orders... Hummm, where have I heard that sentence? And is there really any difference between, "it's just business" and "I was only following orders?"
I'm sure these execs are great guys. They go to church. They tithe. They don't beat their spouses and help the kids with their homework. They bought us a terrific lunch that day! Great private morality. Problem is I can't have one set of values at home, in my private life, and another when I sit down at my work desk. I have to make an honest effort to be morally consistant. My buisness decisions, those decisions I make at work every day, have an impact that goes well beyond my own backyard.
Another mid century thinker, Hannah Arendt, wrote of what she called, "the banality of evil." Evil can be very subtle, very ordinary, very every day and banal. So we have to ask ourselves about the larger picture. What impact does my company, my job, my actions have on the larger environment? How does it impact the people down the road whose well I may have just poisoned because I followed my boss's orders to dump paint thinner down the drain?
How do I live out the balancing act between being a moral person of faith and participating in what is in so many ways an immoral corporate and political environment?
Where is that line? (And why do they keep moving the damn thing?) Because be sure, there is a line. It's inside, or should be inside every person of faith. The first step in learning when to cross it, and when not to, is in knowing where it is.
I'm no pillar of virtue. I simply reached the line, for me, and decided not to cross over. Aiming at moral balance hasn't done much for my checkbook. I do, however, sleep better--at least until the next time.
Okay, I realize some of my friends, maybe a lot of them, will read this and say something like, "Jesus, do you really sit around and think about this stuff?" Yea, I do... a lot. Call it a quirk, but then I've always been a bit excentric.
Back near the middle of the last century, Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, Moral Man, Immoral Society. As the title implies, this is a central dilemma any person of faith must wrestle with. How do I live as a moral person in the midst of what is in so many ways an immoral society?
Okay, so "society" is a big subject. Let's break it down. That was essentially the topic of my last blog on United Health Group screwing your grandmother out of her insulin while putting billions in profits into their corporate and executive pockets. I reached the point where, as a Christian/Buddhist person of faith, I could no longer in good conscience justify--live with myself--working at a job where I'm on the phone telling grandma we're not paying the extra fifteen a month her insulin is going up, then attending a sales meeting where top execs are gleeful over UHG having made 2.7 billion last year, not to mention their six figure incomes. So I walked back to my corporate cubbyhole, scooted my chair across the aisle to my super and said, "I don't belong here. You have my notice."
Granted, not everyone can do that; at least, not immediately. The difficulty, however, in finding ethical employment cannot be avoided merely by saying, "times are tough." Being a person of faith demands we continually evaluate whether the way we earn our daily bread comes down more on the side of the moral than immoral side of the equation.
Put a bit differently, when does it become time for a person of faith to tell the corporate plantation owner to, "Take this job and shove it!"
There are no simple answers. I do have to eat. If I have a family, they too have that nasty and getting more expensive by the day habit. And no one can live without seeking shelter from the storm. Freezing to death is not an option. So we find ourselves in a quandry. If I really think what my company is doing is unethical, do I risk everything and quit without another job? Or is my greater responsibility providing food and shelter and college to my kids, even if it means participating in something I think is wrong, if not even--to this in a moment--evil?
This is not merely an academic exercise in splitting ethical hairs. Be absolutely certain, human history can turn on seemingly insignificant acts of defiant morality. Remember the African-American lady who refused to move to the back of the bus? How she inspired some young preacher to take a stand? And those black kids who had the audacity to order and burger and fries at an all-white lunch counter?
Deciding it was time to pursue more ethical employment was, for me, an act of moral defiance. I just decided I couldn't participate in what was happening to our customers any more; especially when I knew what was happening behind the scenes at UHG. I mean, really, couldn't these corporate types help grandma out by at least being willing to split the difference for her increased costs?
Had I stood up in that meeting and said, "Hey, how can you guys justify making all that money when the lady I got off the phone with is going to have to skip a meal to pay for her insulin?" Doubtless I would have gotten the response, "Look, we get it. This isn't personal. It's just business." And there's the problem Niebuhr recognized: As a person of faith it's impossible to separate the personal from the social.
As a person of faith I must share at least some moral responsibility for the impact of the decisions I make on my job. Those decisions effect the rest of humanity. So if you're my boss, don't tell me to quietly go out back and dump toxic chemicals down the city sewer. Poisoning the global water table is a bit much to ask a person of faith to do.
Yet, here again, there's the temptation to say it's just business.... I'm not responsible... Hey, I was just following orders... Hummm, where have I heard that sentence? And is there really any difference between, "it's just business" and "I was only following orders?"
I'm sure these execs are great guys. They go to church. They tithe. They don't beat their spouses and help the kids with their homework. They bought us a terrific lunch that day! Great private morality. Problem is I can't have one set of values at home, in my private life, and another when I sit down at my work desk. I have to make an honest effort to be morally consistant. My buisness decisions, those decisions I make at work every day, have an impact that goes well beyond my own backyard.
Another mid century thinker, Hannah Arendt, wrote of what she called, "the banality of evil." Evil can be very subtle, very ordinary, very every day and banal. So we have to ask ourselves about the larger picture. What impact does my company, my job, my actions have on the larger environment? How does it impact the people down the road whose well I may have just poisoned because I followed my boss's orders to dump paint thinner down the drain?
How do I live out the balancing act between being a moral person of faith and participating in what is in so many ways an immoral corporate and political environment?
Where is that line? (And why do they keep moving the damn thing?) Because be sure, there is a line. It's inside, or should be inside every person of faith. The first step in learning when to cross it, and when not to, is in knowing where it is.
I'm no pillar of virtue. I simply reached the line, for me, and decided not to cross over. Aiming at moral balance hasn't done much for my checkbook. I do, however, sleep better--at least until the next time.
Friday, February 18, 2011
How United Health Group is Screwing Your Grandmother
I'm the guy who just told your grandmother that she's going to have to come up with an extra fifteen dollars a week out of pocket to cover her insulin. I sat at my computer and patiently listened while she told me how Social Security is her only income and she just didn't know how she was going to pay for these increases in food costs and prescriptions and the electric bill. But after all that all I could say was, "I'm sorry, but United Healthcare just isn't going to pay for the increase."
I cut off your grandmother after attending an employee meeting with the big wigs of UHC where they gleefully told us how great a job we were doing and how terrific the Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug sales were going and how wonderful it is to be taking such good care of our old people. And how United Health Group just made 2.7 billion dollars. We should be so proud of ourselves!
Can't make that extra fifteen for you insulin, grandma? United Health Group executives have some advice. Try skipping lunch an extra day a week. Screw you, grandma.
How did this happen? When I moved back to my home town of Roanoke, Va., a couple of years ago after an almost forty year absence, I needed a job. United Health Group has a very large call center here and, despite my extreme dislike for health insurance companies, I applied, got hired, went to class for three days, took a state test, and became a licensed health insurance sales agent in all fifty states. My experiences there did not improve my opinion of the industry, to say the least. There was never any doubt about the number one priority: get the sale.... period.
This was during the height of the health care bill debate, and we would get regular emails from company execs about how we should write our representatives and tell them this, that, and the other about what was good or bad about the bill. Of course somewhere in the email would be the proviso, and I quote... "(this is voluntary)." We were coached on how to explain why the company was discontinuing coverage, called Service Area Reduction, which basically meant that UHG didn't make enough profit there that month so we were dumping our seniors, who we're so happy to be taking such good care of, in the street.
Whenever the customer service lines got overloaded we in sales ended up taking their calls. Time and again we sat there listening to grandma and grandad telling us their stories of how food was going up and how uncle Henry had to have his medicine and there just wasn't enough money.... on and on and on.
Our lunch room conversations centered around things like, "I can't believe the shit I'm having to tell people." I started to feel dirty, I mean really filthy, about even being in the building. When my shift ended I couldn't wait to get home and take a shower.
I realize not everyone there was in my position. After seven months of cajolling people into buying a Medicare Advantage Plan that had a higher deductible than last year and would pay for even less, I quit. It encourages me to know that not a single person who was hired with me is still there, mostly for the very same reasons.
The experience raises some interesting questions. Given the economic and medical situations of our elderly, how much is too much money to make? individually as a corporate exec, or employee? How much is too much for a company to make? Couldn't some of that 2.7 billion be used to help cover a few dollars more of grandma's insulin? And how much moral responsibility does an employee incur working for a company that, despite it's protestations and cloaking it's every action in the mantel of corporate righteousness, is screwing grandma? How do these people sleep at night?
The long term answer is universal health insurance, single payer system, with a strong public option to compete with companies like UHG that have essentially no competition. Yes, there are other health care companies. But if you compare their prices online you'll find they're price fixing. You pay the same price for the same coverage no matter what company you choose.
With fewer and fewer of us being able to afford any kind of health insurance, forcing premiums up; with hospital and doctor and drug costs going through the roof; the system as it is will not last a lot longer. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Especially in the US, a country ranked by the World Health Organization as thirty-seventh in providing health services to it's citizens--just behind Costa Rica. Not to mention our having one of the highest infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. I could go on.
Sorry to break it to you grandma, but that company that's telling you how much they care and how well they're going to take care of you.... that's a sales pitch.... and nothing besides. It's an empty promise some guy or girl sitting behind a computer screen reading a script is getting paid to tell you, knowing all the while that what's hidden in all that fine print they're required to read you is what's not going to get paid this year. Believe me, they can't wait to get home and shower off the filth.... and find another job.
I cut off your grandmother after attending an employee meeting with the big wigs of UHC where they gleefully told us how great a job we were doing and how terrific the Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug sales were going and how wonderful it is to be taking such good care of our old people. And how United Health Group just made 2.7 billion dollars. We should be so proud of ourselves!
Can't make that extra fifteen for you insulin, grandma? United Health Group executives have some advice. Try skipping lunch an extra day a week. Screw you, grandma.
How did this happen? When I moved back to my home town of Roanoke, Va., a couple of years ago after an almost forty year absence, I needed a job. United Health Group has a very large call center here and, despite my extreme dislike for health insurance companies, I applied, got hired, went to class for three days, took a state test, and became a licensed health insurance sales agent in all fifty states. My experiences there did not improve my opinion of the industry, to say the least. There was never any doubt about the number one priority: get the sale.... period.
This was during the height of the health care bill debate, and we would get regular emails from company execs about how we should write our representatives and tell them this, that, and the other about what was good or bad about the bill. Of course somewhere in the email would be the proviso, and I quote... "(this is voluntary)." We were coached on how to explain why the company was discontinuing coverage, called Service Area Reduction, which basically meant that UHG didn't make enough profit there that month so we were dumping our seniors, who we're so happy to be taking such good care of, in the street.
Whenever the customer service lines got overloaded we in sales ended up taking their calls. Time and again we sat there listening to grandma and grandad telling us their stories of how food was going up and how uncle Henry had to have his medicine and there just wasn't enough money.... on and on and on.
Our lunch room conversations centered around things like, "I can't believe the shit I'm having to tell people." I started to feel dirty, I mean really filthy, about even being in the building. When my shift ended I couldn't wait to get home and take a shower.
I realize not everyone there was in my position. After seven months of cajolling people into buying a Medicare Advantage Plan that had a higher deductible than last year and would pay for even less, I quit. It encourages me to know that not a single person who was hired with me is still there, mostly for the very same reasons.
The experience raises some interesting questions. Given the economic and medical situations of our elderly, how much is too much money to make? individually as a corporate exec, or employee? How much is too much for a company to make? Couldn't some of that 2.7 billion be used to help cover a few dollars more of grandma's insulin? And how much moral responsibility does an employee incur working for a company that, despite it's protestations and cloaking it's every action in the mantel of corporate righteousness, is screwing grandma? How do these people sleep at night?
The long term answer is universal health insurance, single payer system, with a strong public option to compete with companies like UHG that have essentially no competition. Yes, there are other health care companies. But if you compare their prices online you'll find they're price fixing. You pay the same price for the same coverage no matter what company you choose.
With fewer and fewer of us being able to afford any kind of health insurance, forcing premiums up; with hospital and doctor and drug costs going through the roof; the system as it is will not last a lot longer. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Especially in the US, a country ranked by the World Health Organization as thirty-seventh in providing health services to it's citizens--just behind Costa Rica. Not to mention our having one of the highest infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. I could go on.
Sorry to break it to you grandma, but that company that's telling you how much they care and how well they're going to take care of you.... that's a sales pitch.... and nothing besides. It's an empty promise some guy or girl sitting behind a computer screen reading a script is getting paid to tell you, knowing all the while that what's hidden in all that fine print they're required to read you is what's not going to get paid this year. Believe me, they can't wait to get home and shower off the filth.... and find another job.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
What Keith Richards and Barack Obama Have in Common
"Alan, I swear I'm not kidding. It's true. Everybody who was ever close to the Rolling Stones will tell you it's true."
"Scott," I said, trying to keep a straight face while speaking with a first-rate guitar player who lists Ringo Star's All-Star Rock and Roll Band on his resume; "it's not true. It's an urban legend, pure and simple. Even if it did come from someone inside the Stone's inner circle, how could that be considered reliable? God knows what their blood alcohol, cocaine, grass, heroin content was when they said it. It's an urban legend."
"No way, Alan. No way, man. Keith Richards really does have to have all the old blood flushed out of his body and replaced with new once a month or he'll die. Hell, why do think he looks the way he does?"
After a while, there are some things you just don't argue with a true believer. It's like banging your head into the proverbial brick wall.
Keith Richards, guitar player, singer, songwriter, recent author of the best selling autobiography, "Life"; recovering booze, heroin, and by his own admission damn near everything else addict; the guy who, along with buddies Mick Jagger and Brain Jones founded rock and roll's longest lasting, arguably most creative band: The Rolling Stones. The man who, some remain convinced, has his blood flushed every month.
Then there's Barack Obama, President of the United States. Barack Obama, whose resume commands respect from all but the most incomprehensible dullards the rest of us have the sad misfortune of having to put up with. A resume that includes Harvard Law, the United States Senate, the new START treaty, the first comprehensive health care reform bill in our nation's history. I could go on. But you get the idea.
Two incredibly accomplished individuals. Keith Richards, Rolling Stone. Barack Obama, President of the United States. What could these two possibly have in common?
I've given this considerable thought. Turns out it's not so difficult to figure out. My first clue came when I was watching the tube last night and saw this Fox News guy interviewing a group of Iowa voters. Turns out about half of this focus group believes, despite Obama's repeated affirmations that he's a Christian, that he is nonetheless a Muslim. No doubt these same folk would number themselves among those "birthers" who, again, despite all evidence to the contrary, firmly believe the President really can't be the President because he's not a native born U.S. citizen.
Okay... Here's the connection... Keith Richards, Rolling Stone. Barack Obama, President of the United States. Both men are living proof that if a story, a lie, a myth, or an urban legend gets passed around enough, no matter how shit-all-stupid it is, there are plenty of shit-all-stupid people who will believe it.
This is especially true if they hear it and see it being repeated by members of the official Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council: St. Sarah the Simple, Glenn John the Bircher Beck, and Rushdumb the Drug Addled Gasbag.
For those of you fortunate enough not to have, prior to this, heard of the Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council and their minions of morons, let me take this opportunity to point out that it is an offshoot of the Flat Earth Society, the Sun Revolves Around the Earth Consortium, and the Nobody Ever Really Walked on the Moon Fellowship of Bible Thumping Fundamentalists.
What is truly sad about all this is the apparent fact that the Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council is apparently running the Republican Party.
Where are the voices from Right of Center who are willing to speak out and say, quite simply, "Look folks, if it looks like shit, smells like shit, squishes like shit, and you heard it from the Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council, it's probably shit?" More traditional Republicans should remember that silence is always taken as agreement.
There will always be those who, despite evidence to the contrary, persist in believing urban legends, myths, lies and the lying liers who tell them. In a free society, they are to be heard, tolerated, and their speech protected. That, however, is not to say we should let the idiots run the country.
Mahalo
"Scott," I said, trying to keep a straight face while speaking with a first-rate guitar player who lists Ringo Star's All-Star Rock and Roll Band on his resume; "it's not true. It's an urban legend, pure and simple. Even if it did come from someone inside the Stone's inner circle, how could that be considered reliable? God knows what their blood alcohol, cocaine, grass, heroin content was when they said it. It's an urban legend."
"No way, Alan. No way, man. Keith Richards really does have to have all the old blood flushed out of his body and replaced with new once a month or he'll die. Hell, why do think he looks the way he does?"
After a while, there are some things you just don't argue with a true believer. It's like banging your head into the proverbial brick wall.
Keith Richards, guitar player, singer, songwriter, recent author of the best selling autobiography, "Life"; recovering booze, heroin, and by his own admission damn near everything else addict; the guy who, along with buddies Mick Jagger and Brain Jones founded rock and roll's longest lasting, arguably most creative band: The Rolling Stones. The man who, some remain convinced, has his blood flushed every month.
Then there's Barack Obama, President of the United States. Barack Obama, whose resume commands respect from all but the most incomprehensible dullards the rest of us have the sad misfortune of having to put up with. A resume that includes Harvard Law, the United States Senate, the new START treaty, the first comprehensive health care reform bill in our nation's history. I could go on. But you get the idea.
Two incredibly accomplished individuals. Keith Richards, Rolling Stone. Barack Obama, President of the United States. What could these two possibly have in common?
I've given this considerable thought. Turns out it's not so difficult to figure out. My first clue came when I was watching the tube last night and saw this Fox News guy interviewing a group of Iowa voters. Turns out about half of this focus group believes, despite Obama's repeated affirmations that he's a Christian, that he is nonetheless a Muslim. No doubt these same folk would number themselves among those "birthers" who, again, despite all evidence to the contrary, firmly believe the President really can't be the President because he's not a native born U.S. citizen.
Okay... Here's the connection... Keith Richards, Rolling Stone. Barack Obama, President of the United States. Both men are living proof that if a story, a lie, a myth, or an urban legend gets passed around enough, no matter how shit-all-stupid it is, there are plenty of shit-all-stupid people who will believe it.
This is especially true if they hear it and see it being repeated by members of the official Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council: St. Sarah the Simple, Glenn John the Bircher Beck, and Rushdumb the Drug Addled Gasbag.
For those of you fortunate enough not to have, prior to this, heard of the Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council and their minions of morons, let me take this opportunity to point out that it is an offshoot of the Flat Earth Society, the Sun Revolves Around the Earth Consortium, and the Nobody Ever Really Walked on the Moon Fellowship of Bible Thumping Fundamentalists.
What is truly sad about all this is the apparent fact that the Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council is apparently running the Republican Party.
Where are the voices from Right of Center who are willing to speak out and say, quite simply, "Look folks, if it looks like shit, smells like shit, squishes like shit, and you heard it from the Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council, it's probably shit?" More traditional Republicans should remember that silence is always taken as agreement.
There will always be those who, despite evidence to the contrary, persist in believing urban legends, myths, lies and the lying liers who tell them. In a free society, they are to be heard, tolerated, and their speech protected. That, however, is not to say we should let the idiots run the country.
Mahalo
Friday, February 4, 2011
Glenn Beck, Fundamentalist Preacher
We've long passed the point where Glenn Beck in particular, and Fox News in general, can be considered serious, fact based reporting and thoughtful analysis. His most recent explicating of "the coming Caliphat," where he illustrates how the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt is plotting to take over Europe. In Beck's world, every event is reduced to the most simple terms.
Growing up in the very conservative Southern Baptist Church, I remember traveling evangelists who would come for a week of services designed in every detail to accomplish one thing. Convince everyone the world was going to end in just a few months and you'd better come running down the aisle at the hymn of invitation, accept Jesus as your personal savior, and "avoid the wrath of God that's surely coming upon you!"
Like Beck, every evangelist had their charts and blackboards where they would painstakingly illustrate how current events most surely pointed to the end of the world, the second coming, the Book of Revelation coming literally true in our time. How nice to know human history is reducable to such simple interpretations of scripture and current events. According to the old time evangelists who shamelessly used fear tactics to further their religious agenda, there are only good guys and bad guys, right and wrong. What's tragic is that so many people buy into such shallowness.
But then, what can we expect in a country where, by some estimates, more than half of adults can't read beyond an eighth grade level? Now I understand the appeal of Beck, and, of course, Palin.
Beck is like the traveling evangelist, the fundamentalist preachers utilized fear and simplicity to offer comfort in a complex and often frightening world that appears always on the edge of spinning out of control. Why worry? Glenn and company have it all figured out. It's all unfolding according to some sort of divinely ordained plan. How convenient, and reassuring, to believe the people in the streets of Cairo are mere pawns in the Caliph's game. Economics, justice, jobs, food shortages, lack of authentic free and fair elections; too much trouble to think of all that!
Sorry guys, it's just not that simple.
Mahalo
Growing up in the very conservative Southern Baptist Church, I remember traveling evangelists who would come for a week of services designed in every detail to accomplish one thing. Convince everyone the world was going to end in just a few months and you'd better come running down the aisle at the hymn of invitation, accept Jesus as your personal savior, and "avoid the wrath of God that's surely coming upon you!"
Like Beck, every evangelist had their charts and blackboards where they would painstakingly illustrate how current events most surely pointed to the end of the world, the second coming, the Book of Revelation coming literally true in our time. How nice to know human history is reducable to such simple interpretations of scripture and current events. According to the old time evangelists who shamelessly used fear tactics to further their religious agenda, there are only good guys and bad guys, right and wrong. What's tragic is that so many people buy into such shallowness.
But then, what can we expect in a country where, by some estimates, more than half of adults can't read beyond an eighth grade level? Now I understand the appeal of Beck, and, of course, Palin.
Beck is like the traveling evangelist, the fundamentalist preachers utilized fear and simplicity to offer comfort in a complex and often frightening world that appears always on the edge of spinning out of control. Why worry? Glenn and company have it all figured out. It's all unfolding according to some sort of divinely ordained plan. How convenient, and reassuring, to believe the people in the streets of Cairo are mere pawns in the Caliph's game. Economics, justice, jobs, food shortages, lack of authentic free and fair elections; too much trouble to think of all that!
Sorry guys, it's just not that simple.
Mahalo
Monday, January 31, 2011
The Wrong Side of History?
Hundreds of thousands pour through the streets of Alexandria and Cairo, two of the world's oldest, undoubtedly historically significant cities dating back to the origins of civilization itself. People demanding change long denied. People daring to speak truth to power. People with the courage to insist upon the democratic reforms that will provide the average citizen with a voice in how governance takes place.
We can't help but wonder with whom the army is going to cast it's collective lot. The people? Or the thirty-year Mubarak dictatorship? The top brass is with the status quo. But if the order comes down, will the boots on the ground fire upon their next door neighbors, sisters, cousins, and brothers? That remains to be seen.
What's going on behind the scenes at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? Publically the White House treads softly lest the situation in the streets become more violent. Caution is wise. But there can be no doubt Mubarak's time has past. He has to go. Otherwise, we end up on the wrong side of history.
The poor and the disenfranchised will not long be denied the basic dignities of human rights. The right to determine the who and the how of those in power. The rights to enough food to eat and decent medical care for one's self and one's family. And others...
Not even the ancient Pharoh's could stem the tide of political reform. Remember Moses and the folks at the Red Sea. Pharoh took a bath on that one. Today's Pharoh will meet a similiar fate. That's the way it ends up for those who choose the wrong side of history.
So whose side are you we on?
We can't help but wonder with whom the army is going to cast it's collective lot. The people? Or the thirty-year Mubarak dictatorship? The top brass is with the status quo. But if the order comes down, will the boots on the ground fire upon their next door neighbors, sisters, cousins, and brothers? That remains to be seen.
What's going on behind the scenes at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? Publically the White House treads softly lest the situation in the streets become more violent. Caution is wise. But there can be no doubt Mubarak's time has past. He has to go. Otherwise, we end up on the wrong side of history.
The poor and the disenfranchised will not long be denied the basic dignities of human rights. The right to determine the who and the how of those in power. The rights to enough food to eat and decent medical care for one's self and one's family. And others...
Not even the ancient Pharoh's could stem the tide of political reform. Remember Moses and the folks at the Red Sea. Pharoh took a bath on that one. Today's Pharoh will meet a similiar fate. That's the way it ends up for those who choose the wrong side of history.
So whose side are you we on?
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