The frog is boiling

The frog is boiling.

We should have known better. Some of us saw parts of it coming but I don’t believe any of us were sufficiently astute and observant to predict the events of this week.

We should have been, but we weren’t.

I’ve known for a long time that – freed of restraints – the ultra-Christian Right would put people like me in camps. The trouble is that they are backed up and given credence by their presumed association with the much more vast population of people who identify as Christians and believe in the teachings of their prophet but can’t see where unexamined sectarian belief inevitably leads.

Them vs us.

I’m not writing to slam Christians. I once thought I was one. And I believe I would have nothing to fear from those who truly embrace the overall intent of the teachings of the Christ.

I also thought I was a Republican and I thought that meant something. I believed (still do, actually) that the best government is the least government. Personally, I would take the funding away from Planned Parenthood and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the welfare state. But not because I think those are bad things (okay, we can talk about the welfare state) but rather, because when you accept funding, you give the federal government a de facto interest in how these programs are run.

I don’t want federal bureaucrats or the likes of Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi to be able to dink around with a women’s health care choices or determine what I can hear on the radio. And it’s through this lens that I view government in general and the federal government in particular.

The framers of the Constitution had a tough nut to crack. They had to provide both the rigidity and the flexibility that would be needed to have this document serve the reasonable best interests of all citizens, but they could only know what they knew in 1787. They couldn’t know how twisted the interpretation of their document would be after two centuries-plus of finagling.

And so, we sat there in the pan of water, comfortably back-stroking. We didn’t notice the water getting warmer. Not when the religionists gradually established belief in their dearly held fairy tales as a prerequisite to holding office. Or when drivers’ licensure was co-opted to create a de facto national ID program.

To be sure, there were times when we stood together to beat back the insidious creep of hate and division. The sixties and seventies saw many citizens standing united to resist the hob-nailed advance of bigotry and Big Brother.

We fought the big fights and meanwhile, the little ones went right past us.

We railed at Nixon but then forgave Clinton for lying famously, egregiously, to the detriment of the country. Watergate was denounced, as it should have been. But not wag the dog.

And the water got warmer.

We cheered W for his bold statements atop a burned out fire engine at Ground Zero, but failed to notice when he and Cheney used the that upwelling of national defensiveness to allow terms like ‘Homeland Security’ to slip unexamined into our lexicon.

And now, a bit warmer and we’re starting to yawn.

We became so accustomed to the various, ridiculous attempts to repeal or defund the ACA that we failed to be frightened or repulsed by the McConnells and Ryans and Cruzs behind the curtain. In fact, we allowed them to take the soap box without recognizing and responding to their insertion of their hateful agenda into our daily lives.

Almost asleep now…

In our collective self-satisfaction at having elected a minority president – twice – and the warm glow of eight years free from scandal and with unprecedented openness we took our eyes off the gathering dark. Some of us felt the bubbles start to form in the water around us but not enough. So we let Bernie pass by and instead nominated a lesser (and yes, fundamentally dishonest) candidate with plenty of handles the haters could grab onto.

And they did. Gleefully.

Recognizing their moment, they turned the heat all the way up and the water, already hovering just under 212, broke into a boil. And it was too late for us amphibians.

It wasn’t just the political landscape or the dampening effect of hijacked religion that got us here. It was those things but so much more. Our culture has changed, sometimes for the better but with progress came challenges that we haven’t recognized, much less worked to resolve.

We assumed because we can each name a black friend and Martin has a holiday that the racists were defeated.

We allowed the indoctrination of our youth into a world of violence and misogyny under the cover of harmless game playing.

We railed at sexual assault but ignored the assumption that women are somehow less qualified.

We fought the ‘great evil’ that knocked down our buildings but ignored the dead child at the tide line.

In so many ways, we chose not to notice the rising temperature until almost too late.

But it’s not. Not too late.

We need to get smart.

We need to look at consequences. And we need to examine the motives and beliefs of the people into whose hands we put the reins of power.

It does no good to rely on the teachings of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John if we give power to the cretins who only read Leviticus.  You want to use the Bible as your guide, fine by me, but read the whole thing. Understand the aspiration and not just the anachronistic rules.

We need to read more than headlines, react to more than just the most obvious trespasses.

We have to start paying attention. 

One thing

I wanted to fix it all.

Wanted so badly to roll back the horrible.

Can’t do it. Can you?

Didn’t think so.

I can’t unwind all the malicious, destructive and just plain wrong-headed things happening today, this week, this month.

I just can’t.

And neither can you.

And that’s okay. It’s okay to say can’t. It’s actually sort of liberating. And even necessary.

Important note: I did not say won’t. Said can’t.

You need to say can’t to clear away enough of the haze to see your way to can.

Because – and please believe this - there is a path to can.

It doesn’t wend its way through dozens of issues beyond my control.

The path to can runs straight through clarity and commitment.

One thing.

I can choose one thing

I’ll make it my thing. The one ship I can turn. (Okay, help turn.)

One really important thing. Yes, yes, they’re all really important.

But I’ll choose my one.

And get started.  

Today, I am thankful

As I write this, a new president has just been sworn in. And this presents me with a choice. I can hang my head in mourning or I can thank my lucky stars that I’m alive on such a historic day. I choose the latter.

Because today, they’re all vindicated.

Frederick Douglass when he said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

Harriet Tubman, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

Mahatma Ghandi, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Nelson Mandela, “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

Don’t get me wrong. I believe with all my heart that the new president will prove to be an unrepentant despot, that he will continue to reveal himself as a bigoted buffoon, and that at the end of his tenure, we will have taken a huge step backward in so many ways. By the simple act of elevating him, we already have.

I get that. But I choose this morning to concentrate on another threshold crossed, one that I can celebrate.

Today, I thank fate that I was alive to see the Presidency of Barack Obama. This has been an administration opposed at every turn by the haters who drew a line in the sand as he came into office and continued to obstruct right up to the last minute. This man’s right to hold office was challenged solely because of the color of his skin. His ability to exercise his constitutional duties was forestalled by the opposition’s atrocious refusal to even consider his proposals.

And now, the haters will tear down his signal achievement, one that has benefited many millions of our citizens. Make no mistake, they do this not because his plan was flawed. If that were the case, they could just set about fixing it. No, they are tearing it down because mostly, it worked. They cannot have such a glorious achievement stand, associated as it is with our first minority President.  

There’s symbolism in the fact that it began to rain at the Capitol literally as his successor stepped up to speak. But if I’ve learned anything in my years, it’s that eventually, the storm passes and we can begin again.

As horrified as I am by the now-incumbent, as saddened as I am by the willingness of so many of our citizens to either embrace or overlook his shortcomings and his perfidy, as fearful as I am of the things to come, I still can’t help feeling uplifted as I watch President Obama go through the ceremonies of the transfer of power.

Barack Obama, by his intelligence and incredible calm in the face of mindless opposition-for-the-sake-of-opposition, by his grace and courage, by his respect for the people he represented and the absence of even a suggestion of scandal, has vindicated the aspirations of so many generations who demanded their opportunity to contribute. No matter what the haters do going forward, a standard has been defined. It is a standard of competence, of goodwill in the face of viciousness, of perseverance in the face of mindless resistance. It is a standard by which we should measure our leaders from this day forward.

And we got to see it all.

I got to see the Obama years.

And for that, I’m thankful. 

The counter surfer

Zoey the Small and Annoying stole most of the pot roast off the kitchen counter last night and hid in my writing room to consume it.

When I die, and if there is anything to the whole heaven and hell thing, I want credit for not having strangled her.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’m home today for Martin Luther King’s birthday and it occurred to me to offer these few thoughts:

It’s not about the man. Although, the man was courageous, thoughtful, brilliant, a consummate strategist, and more.

It’s about legacy. A legacy of works. Get a recording and a transcription of his speech on the National Mall. Listen as you read the words.

It’s about struggle. A struggle that continues and will continue long after everyone reading this missive is dead and gone.

 Ultimately, it’s about us. It’s about who we are and who we hope to be. More important, who we intend to be, who we will work toward being.

You don’t need to become an MLK aficionado to understand the message. You don’t need to read ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ or research his struggle to get then-President Kennedy to do the right thing.

Today is not about strategies or tactics. It’s not even about Martin, really. Or Harriett. Or the West End Computers. Or Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Or even John Lewis and his opposition to our current Buffoon-elect.

Today is not about individuals or individual efforts. If today is to be meaningful, it should be about us.

Today should be about our aspirations.

Few works in our history have been more about human aspiration than that one speech. So if you want to take a break from political rantings (mine included) and Tweets and hateful jabs and counter-punches, you could do worse than to put ‘I Have a Dream’ into your Google search box.

Or, just go here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

Read while you listen to the voice. And remember what it’s like to aspire. 

Pleasures of the harbor (revisited)

(I was going through my blog posts as I try to decide what goes and what stays as I transition to another sharing vehicle (read: writer's website). This is one of my favorite things I've written and in the spirit of stepping away from political nastiness for a moment, I beg your forgiveness for recycling it. It's from June of 2013 and I wouldn't change one jot in terms of my feelings for 'home.')

Mary and I have been working on the yard this weekend. Weeding and leveling in 90 degree heat for Gawd knows what reason. Okay, I do know a reason. We’ve had unseasonably wet weather until just a few days ago so we’re using every non-waterlogged day we can to get the work done.

We were going to put in a new fence on two sides until Odin the Large and Lazy decided our disposable income should be shunted into the doggie surgery account. And the Boston bombers made it necessary for Mary to make an expensive unplanned Mom visit with Two. So now, we’re limiting our landscaping to jobs that cost no money. The trouble is, when you’re talking about landscaping, money and sweat are expended in more or less inverse proportion. Two’ s worth it; jury’s still out on the mutt.

I find manual labor prime time for contemplation and I got to thinking about our house and what it means to us. Just because it’s been our place of residence for twenty years does not make it our home, to my way of thinking. You can build a house but you have to make a home. And a home’s not made of framing and plaster. It’s made of comfort and familiarity and security and love and trust and a whole bunch of other attributes that have nothing to do with construction materials.

Nor is a home necessarily the place where you spend the majority of your time. It is the place to which you will always return, no matter what else changes in your life. When A.E. Housman wrote the words “home is the sailor, home from the sea,” they resonated with folks wherever the words were read. They’ve been repeated and paraphrased in so many ways and by so many writers not because we all go to sea, but rather because coming home is an experience we all know or at least wish we could know. Because while your home and my home might be leagues apart and entirely different in physical ways, home is a concept upon which we can all agree. We don’t all see a windowless cabin or an Italianate manse or a tract or row house or a mud hut. But we do all see ‘home.’ And that word carries more congruence than diversity in terms of the parts of it we care about.

When Phil Ochs wrote “The Pleasures of the Harbor,” it didn’t matter which harbor. It didn’t matter if a particular listener’s home is anywhere near the sea. “The sea bids farewell. She waves in swells and sends them on their way…” The traveler has returned home. It matters not one whit whether there’s a coastline involved. ‘The sea’ is where we go when we’re in and of the world. ‘The harbor’ is home.

Mary and I are downsizing our ‘stuff’ just now (the same stuff of which I’ve written disparagingly in earlier posts) both as a de-cluttering program and also to prepare for the day when home will be differently located. We’ll eventually move to a different house, most likely in a different city or even state. But home will travel with us. It’s a place in one’s soul, not a spot on a map. We will know it as the place to which we and our daughters and others will always return.

Silence is acceptance

I had a brief exchange this morning with a highly valued friend. She shared a view that I know from our conversations and your Facebook posts resonates with several of you – that folks should not be judged by how they voted in the recent election. That people have a variety of reasons for voting for a particular candidate and that it is wrong to categorize them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ solely on the basis of this one decision.

I understand your point of view, really I do. I’ve even tried to embrace it. But I can’t.

Those who fail to understand history are indeed doomed to repeat it. And we have a history as a civilization of failing to stop despots, to our everlasting shame.

When I was studying ethics in college, one of my philosophy profs used to hit us with the old saw about ‘if you had the opportunity to kill Hitler before 1934, as a moral person should you do it?’  I know this one has become cliché but the thing about clichés is that frequently they become so because they hold an element of truth.

And yes, I know comparisons to Hitler and his minions are considered hyperbolic, so much so that when you make the comparison, folks tend to give you the benefit of doubt by assuming you’re merely exaggerating for the sake of dramatic effect. I get that. And because this is so frequently the case, I will ask you here not to make such an assumption or give me the benefit of a doubt that I promise you should not exist.

I DO believe Donald Trump and 2016 are the moral equivalent of Hitler and 1934. The thing is, I tend to take people at their word until they prove I can’t. And I’ve seen nothing to indicate that Trump was misrepresenting his core values when he invited the Russians to hack the other side, when he offered to pay the legal fees for any of his followers who assaulted protesters, when he spoke of assaulting women, when he said he could commit murder in broad daylight without losing supporters, when he mocked a reporter’s physical challenges, when he lied and lied and lied about every  aspect of his campaign, when he refused to follow the norm of providing his tax returns so voters could understand his allegiances, when he spent years attacking a President on the sole basis of race (and yes, the birther movement was about - and only about - Obama’s skin color and name), when he constantly used propaganda techniques rather than persuasion to keep his name constantly in the news, when he proved his distemper in countless rants on Twitter posts and in incoherent speeches, when he moved to install the worst possible collection of misfits and malefactors as his Cabinet.

As I’ve said before, Trump voters either knew for whom they were voting and didn’t  consider these things to be disqualifying, embracing the worst of the worst, or they voted from a position of ignorance. And if either condition describes you, it is difficult for me to think of you with respect.

This is one of those times. You believe that this is a country that embraces all, or you don’t.

I do NOT suggest that we commit violence against this new Hitler. But we do need to stop him from destroying our country.

And this is one time that silence truly is acceptance.  

Rachel Delevoryas

There is a song by Randy Stonehill out there in the searchisphere called Rachel Delevoryas that I hope you’ll look up and give a listen to. It’s all about a girl who didn’t fit in and was ostracized by her classmates, particularly boys, but who kept true to her inner voice and went on to become a concert musician.

I knew Randy (sort of – he was a couple years ahead of me in high school) but I knew Rachel better. She was a wonderful person with whom to share high school band and orchestra rehearsals and a killer French horn player. More than that, she was a friend to everyone around her.

It is not enough to say that I never heard an unkind word from Rachel. I’ll get closer to the truth in telling you that she consistently went out of her way to be kind and welcoming to everyone around her. And she had a wicked sense of humor, the kind that lays in wait until the perfect, unexpected moment and then springs forth to totally detour the conversation and then pulls back, so you’re left laughing but wondering why.

Rachel was a wonderful musician. That was a class in which we happened to have a great horn section and even among those four, she was a standout.

But competence and kindness aren’t always enough at that age. She wasn’t often invited to our reindeer games, as I recall. Or it may have been that she just wasn’t allowed to go. I think I recall that her parents were pretty strict.

Listening to Randy’s song, I have to admit I probably wasn’t a very good friend to Rachel. Not that I recall specific incidents of being less than charming (although, let’s face it – my high school career was a long series of other-than-charitable encounters so it would be difficult to identify my most egregious missteps) but I recall thinking of her as somewhat outside the perimeter of the in crowd, even among band geeks. Which is odd to realize now because I do recall being somewhat jealous of her. I wanted so badly to be accepted as a good musician and Rachel was one of the best.

Anyway, this morning her picture popped up on a Facebook reunion site so after my umpteenth listening to Randy’s song about Rachel I finally Googled her. I am overjoyed to note that like the girl in the song, the real Rachel has continued and excelled in her musical journey. And whatever we did during high school and however we made her feel, she seems to have gone on to define her life by her own lights.

I am proud to have known Rachel. I wish I could say with confidence that I’m proud of my contribution to that life. Truth is, I just don’t remember.

Memories can inform but you can’t change them. All we have is today and whatever piece of tomorrow comes to us.

Rachel, in case you ever read this, please know that you taught me something. And I’m applying your lessons to today and to those pieces of tomorrow that come my way. 

Wanting to believe

This morning I was reading a blog post about a well-known quasi-military club for boys and their struggles with inclusion. They have a long history of excluding gays but under intense pressure from you know, progress, they have decided that gays are people, too. The rub is that even though this organization will now officially sanction openly gay members and even adult leaders, they also allow each local group the freedom to follow their own beliefs regarding inclusion. And since upwards of 70% of these local units are sponsored by religious organizations, this means that de facto exclusion of gays continues over much of the country.

As a kid, I was a member of one of those local units, sponsored by and meeting on the premises of the Catholic church to which my family belonged. So I saw no problem with the 12^th requirement in the organization’s Law calling for reverence - specifically, reverence to a god. Since god-worship was part of my normal at that morally unchallenged point in my development, I had no problem with this alignment with religion. Frankly, I’m not sure I even noticed it. At monthly meetings we all stood and recited the organization’s oath and laws and dutifully recited the Pledge of Allegiance and (if Father Holland was on the scene as was frequently the case) received his benediction.

I’m not sure I was ever aware of anyone being denied admittance to good ole Troop 641 on the basis of sexual orientation. Which is not to say it didn’t happen. Lake Hills at the mid-century was not what you might call progressive. So, possible. And I didn’t think of my troop leaders or my parish or my friends as bigoted. But of course, in those days they wouldn’t have called it bigotry. They would have called it ‘protecting the normal boys.’

Okay, back to the present situation.

Most of the posts were the typical back and forth until a particular comment gave me pause. One commenter in support of the organization’s position said, “People should be free to believe what they want to believe.” 

No, they shouldn’t.

(I’ll pause for a moment here while you re-read that three times and spent a moment wondering if I’ve taken leave of my senses.)

Please understand it’s not people’s beliefs with which I take issue, it’s how they came by them and the extent to which they advocate to make their beliefs a part of my life.

“… want to believe.”

Seems to me that wanting and believing don’t properly belong in the same sentence.

You should believe because all the evidence points in a certain direction and no credible evidence speaks to the contrary.

Too many people in this last election cycle based their votes on what they wanted to believe. Their jobs were outsourced so they wanted to believe it was the result of skullduggery rather than just market pressures. They wanted to believe that our country’s woes can reasonably be blamed on recent immigrants, as though we’re not an almost entirely immigrant population.

Some people wanted to believe that all men talk that way when women aren’t around, because otherwise, they had to admit Trump is what he is.

When we want to believe we start down a path of illogic that leads inexorably to moral ruin.

Believe because the information available to you supports the proposition. Believe because you’ve no reason not to and the kind and respectful thing is to assume the other person is both honest and knowing. Believe because empirical evidence leaves you with no alternate explanation.

Just, please don’t believe because you want to believe. The world is littered with folks who wanted to believe their abuser would control his (or her) impulses next time. And youngsters whose parents wanted to believe the minister or priest had their children’s best interests in mind. And decimated populations that wanted to believe their country was ‘better than this.’ And religionists who really believe in the Christ or Muhammed or Yahweh, or, or, or… but cannot accept that the beliefs of other folks are not morally repugnant.

Believe if you must but please don’t pretend your beliefs are compelling or that I should share them just because you want to be right.

You’re not. You can’t prove a God, much less a Word of God, so don’t tell me our laws should bow to your unprovable religious mythology. Embrace your religion, love your god but please keep all of the above out of our politics.  Because the end product of wanting to believe leaves us with Pence and Ryan and Trump.