Political Climate

This mid-term as my wife and I drove to the library ballot drop off, we shared the same thought – will there be armed and masked drop box “observers”? I did not like that tinge of fear at voting. It was both a new and unwelcome feeling.

Though Colorado has not evinced any such behavior to my knowledge, fear is something that can reach epidemic proportions in the blink of an eye. And fear is what politics peddles more than any other idea lately. Fear for democracy, fear for our purses and wallets, fear of science and intellect. Of course, as fear spreads, its sibling anger comes with it hand-in-hand.

Fear and anger are certainly nothing new to politics, but now it seems to be the primary goal over ideas and ideals. Fear and anger have become the stick accompanying the prosperity carrot. It is a smorgasbord, grab a plate and pick your poison.

To be sure, there is real risk to some of the elements goaded at. Democracy is at risk, but that risk can be used as a club just as much as our pocketbooks can be. Still, if I had to pick among the topics of fear, I would worry most about democracy.

The economy is currently causing aches and pains, but I do not worry about it. The economy is global in nature and therefor neither the full blame nor the full responsibility of the U.S. It is also demonstrably cyclical. It falls and it comes back. In my sixty years, we have survived the recession of the 70’s, an economic collapse in 2008, and are weathering inflation and talk of a recession now. Live within your means, be understanding and generous to those less fortunate, and we will all come out of the downward spiral. The economy will cycle up.

Democracy does not come and go in cycles. It is a living thing, an experiment that has been going in the United States for 246 years. As a living thing it is born to grow and adapt within the sound framework of the founding fathers. It is made to live and thrive. But if it is ignored or taken advantage of it can die as well. It can be stronger than you imagined, and is more fragile than you think.

Much of the fear in general these days is driven by the political climate espousing what I call “stuffism”. Where’s my stuff? What’s in it for me? Why do they get all the stuff while I get nothing? And this latest manifestation of our greed could not thrive so without the use of “villains”. Villains that are wedges to be driven into our socio-economic fissures and cracks. Villains with roots in antisemitism, racism, and anti-intellectualism. In many ways antisemitism and racism are self-explanatory. They have been front and center before and have raised their ugly heads once again. The anti-intellectualism pervasive today is not as familiar to people. Too many candidates in the last six years have miss-used common sense to make us doubt science and reasoning. This is an appeal to our baser instincts, our lizard brains. Encouraging people not to think. It leads people to embrace conspiracy theory that no matter how implausible draws lines that people blindly follow between one thing and another. And this laziness of thought leads us to deny thoughtful and reasonable explanations and conclusions. It causes us to deny science and the scientific method. It caused us to throw down our masks in anger and breath in COVID. It caused us to believe our system of voting and electing our representative is greatly flawed and given to abuse, instead of believing the numerous recounts and demonstrations of how solid and unbiased it truly is. Where once most people would construct an intellectual exercise to understand an issue, now we google for more information on the disinformation we are fed.

To me it feels like this rise in fear and anger, this combustible fuel of selfishness, this burning match of “common sense”, is turning us into sheep. Cattle herded blindly in the trust of others though it may lead us to slaughter. Politicians wringing their hands in glee as we follow the Judas goat of lies. I admit, this IS easier. That thinking and testing and discovering are an effort. But like most effort, we come out the other side stronger.

Politically Correct

Politics are easy to argue, easy to complain about, easy to turn a blind eye to in ignorance or disgust. I know. I have done all of those things. I have done them in silence, I have done them aloud to the consternation of those around me, and I have done them in print as I rail my way through blogs. But the other night Jean-Marie and I did something different, we participated. How? Why? What on God’s good Earth for?!? We did it for a friend, and at the end of the evening it turned out we did it for ourselves as well.
Jean-Marie and I made a more active political effort for a candidate for El Paso County Commissioner in District 3, Alex Johnson. District 3 is not our district. Alex Johnson does not belong to a party that I often vote for, he is Republican. Alex Johnson is not seasoned, he is only 22 years old and has held no prior political office. But we have known Alex since he was a little boy through the grandmother who raised him; Nora Johnson. Through our friendship with Nora, we have watched Alex grow straight and true as most arrows shot out into the world by a truly loving and giving woman do. So when Alex told us he was running for office and asked us to host a small fund raiser for him, we agreed without hesitation.
We sat down with Alex and discussed the basics, and Jean-Marie jumped into gear. No one throws a party like my wife. We planned the evening with Nora, made lists, bought wine, made appetizers and invited friends and family. We invited a number of people, several of whom could not make it. They all had good reasons, one was in the hospital, some had children to care for, some had other commitments, and one claimed simple apathy. One dear friend, Christian could not make it because she took the time and made the effort to go to Alex’s website and didn’t agree with his politics. How could you not respect that? She did her homework, and made her apologies honestly.
Come the night of the meet and greet, we did not know what to expect. We did not know who would show up, or how would it go. We were nervous, we wanted a good night for Alex but could not guarantee it. Our eldest daughter and her family came, some friends of Nora’s showed, some friends of ours attended, and even my neighbor who was not “political” came because we needed bodies and his wife had made him. We were a mixed bag.
As the evening moved on, Jean-Marie, Nora, and I mingled. We fetched drinks. We encouraged people to eat, and we watched Alex talk one-on-one to people much older than he, and he held their attention, he engaged them. Then the most amazing thing happened. It was time for Alex to speak, and I introduced him. Alex talked, and we all listened. Jean-Marie and I who began this to help a friend, to help a young man we liked very much and were proud of, saw him in a new light. We saw him not simply as a politician, but as an honest man wanting to bring about change and do what he believed was right.
We learned that Alex had spent time as an intern to the Mayor of Colorado Springs, and following the disastrous Waldo Canyon Fire that so affected this town, the Mayor put him in a position of responsibility as the sole point of contact for homeowners and helped connect them with resources from charity, city, and county. We learned that he was editor and chief of the self-funded newspaper at Denver University The Clarion, and took it from being a financially failing business to a very profitable undertaking. We learned he had experience working for the outgoing District 3 Commissioner, that he had a strong history of experience with parks and environmental issues in the area, and much more. Most of all we learned that this bright, intelligent, and genial young man before us had a passion to help, and a passion to make a difference.
He spoke well, and we listened, but Alex truly shined when he took our questions and challenges. Respecting each question asked of him, and offering truthful and direct answers. People who had attended primarily because Jean-Marie and I and his grandmother had asked, left feeling energized and a bit awed. All of us in attendance believe the future is in the hands of the children, but to actually see a young man take up that challenge and responsibility blew us away. Even our neighbor who claimed not to be political ended the evening by saying that he wanted to look into doing a future fund raiser for Alex.
After the guests were gone, and Alex was on his way home, Jean-Marie and I talked about the evening. We talked about how impressed we were with Alex’s poise. We talked about how great the exchange between our guests and Alex was. We talked about what a success the night turned out to be. And holding hands, Jean-Marie and I quietly felt changed. I don’t agree with all his politics, but I can’t deny his integrity, I can’t deny his passion. Politics can be discussed, ideas can be exchanged and considered, but true character is rare in life and even more rare in politicians. When you see it, you know it, and cannot help but be affected by it.

Time of Our Lives

 

The times we live in seem to be dominated by confusion, hatred, and mayhem, while the world seems more than content to push things along rather than step back from the brink.  Three commercial airliners in five months will never see radar again (one still missing reasons unknown, one shot down by a civil war, one possibly a victim of weather). The Middle East has never been a more desperate region. Afghanis die as readily by the same hands that killed them before the US invaded and freed their land. In Iraq monsters that were held at bay by the monster the US removed are set free to wreak their own monstrosities. Gaza is once again a land of rubble and blood, and Egypt, Syria, and Lybia smolder and blaze and rot in varying degrees. Eastern Europe plays out in microcosm in the Russian sponsored breakdown of the Ukraine. And the US is not to be outdone as Republicans and Democrats argue about what is the best way to turn our backs on babies at the borders. Politicians corrupt the honored labels of liberal and conservative into the new "spic", "kike", and "nigger". Guns have become the default expression of the disenfranchised as school children in classrooms become the target of choice, and only a year ago a young African American high school student in Valdosta, Georgia, was beaten beyond recognition, stuffed dead in a hole, and the “incident” ruled a self-inflicted accident as if it were the punch line to the oldest of racist jokes.

In less than 120 years, the world has been mobilized in cars and then planes, moved from hand calculations to slide rule to tablet, carry voice and social connections in the palm of the hand, and enjoy never before available educational opportunities. Since the dawn of man, people have fought and struggled for the higher ground, for a better life. Shouldn’t the better life be here? Shouldn’t we be able to care for ourselves, to feed each other, to put a roof over everyone’s head?

Apparently not. We the sheep in order to form a more perfect union turn a deaf ear and a mute tongue to be blind followers of the purveyors of power who need only scream epithets and sling labels that stick all too easily with the paste of ignorance in order to get us to ignore the man behind the curtain in favor of the Great and Powerful Oz. The most action that we as a nation seem able to accomplish is to point fingers back and forth, to blame that person for our woes and that party for our discomforts, to fear beyond reason that we will only be allowed to fire one bullet at a time rather than the fifty rounds per second we deserve.  Meanwhile fear, starvation, and revolution are more alive than ever out our back door, in the third world, and beyond.

I have long since given up reading the newspapers. Since 9-11 I have stopped watching CNN and all cable news. I can no longer listen for any length of time to news on NPR. My hands are over my ears with my eyes shut. I have to cruise news stories on my own, melt them down using the alchemy of atomic and genetic similarity shared by mankind to distill the vapors for what might be the truth. But it is a world where people retain power by preaching hatred (a pastime older than Genesis and still we know no better, we eat it up, our piggy-persons belly up to the trough for our daily slop of lies because that is what works for us). What good is truth in small hands? How can I stand up and say to the Ukraine that ethnic Russians can still be Ukrainians? How can I turn to those same ethnic Russians and say that blood and country are interchangeable, if you can’t understand that then leave your home and go home? How can I stare down a nation and say, “They are just children. They are the future of the world. If we treat them as garbage, as undesirables, what position does that put the future in?” How can I stand on the mount and shout to the land of my father’s fathers and say, “Stop! For God’s sake Stop! You live in the cradle of religion, and you behave in the least God-like way imaginable!”

I am just one voice, and these times make me feel so small. I am infinitesimal next to powers I do not understand, in the face of atrocities that I understand all too well. There is no word, no spell, no magic phrase I can utter to get the world to stop spinning its wheels, to stop the engine of self-absorption and corruption from devouring humanity. I can only take a breath, focus, and try to believe that if enough small people can come together, a large difference can be made.

When Dinosaurs Walked the Earth

Mitt Romney is being criticized for his comment about obtaining binders full of women’s names to choose from for political appointments when he was governor of Massachusetts. Even though I am not a Romney fan I do not see the harm in what he said or did. There is a male culture in politics, and where it may not be “politically correct” to say the consideration of women for staff roles is thinking outside the box, it doesn’t mean that thinking outside the box isn’t exactly what needs to be done to alter the paradigm.

When I was born, we were a nation on the cusp. We were on the cusp of women’s liberation, and women as a force in the workplace. With this rise of women and all the effort given to prepare them and position them for equality, why were men left out of the transition plan? Perhaps it is because in a male dominated society, men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed. Therefore it is better to conquer us than be responsible for transforming us.

I am not and have never been a male chauvinist, but reconciling how to be a man and gentleman as my mother and father reared me, with how women expect to be treated today is a challenge that at times makes me feel lost at sea. My parents’ generation had much better defined gender roles that they adjusted with partial success to accommodate the coming era. Women’s liberation was a revolution and not a revelation, and so women were the first and only priority within the movement. To this end, my parents had to teach their daughters to be independent and self-sufficient in the hopes that they would prosper amid this revolution, meanwhile rearing their sons in a more traditional since.

For the most part, women of today seem focused on and comfortable in the role of bread winners, workers, and leaders. Meanwhile men have become a jumbled mass comprised of those that are part of gender equality, those that are chauvinists, and those that are social dinosaurs. I am not sure that the relatively small portion represented by the chauvinist will ever be eliminated, but they and their effect will be minimized. We social dinosaurs will take care of ourselves as we are committed to self-extinction, begging for a metaphorical meteor to collide with our world and release us from our evolutionary dead end. We dinosaurs are the men helping to rear and encourage a unified gender view for a better world, while balance how things are with the siren call of ancient genetic memories that whisper into the primitive regions of our brains, “Provide, protect, procreate…”

We dinosaurs find it both fair and necessary for the world’s survival for it to change in this way, but it is difficult for us to deny the ancient concepts of hunter-gatherers and nesters. We still open doors for women even though those who recognize the gesture often think of it as patronizing, and those who are unfamiliar with the act sprint for the open door as if it were simply a limited time offer. We still stand when a lady leaves the table or enters the room, an action met with confusion for all but a few. We still use ma’am as a term of respect, usually to be rebuffed, and accused of making the woman on the receiving end feel “old.”

Democrats (who I have primarily voted for) have been conditioned to their platform of equality of the sexes (derived from the need for a political advantage), while Republicans have been slower to come around. They want to embrace women into their ranks, but many just do not know how. Older established Republicans, I consider to be among my ranks of dinosaurs moving things along ploddingly and inevitably even though there is no place for us in the resulting landscape. So it is a mystery to me with all the other issues of substance out there, why Mitt Romney should be mocked because he made an honest effort to be inclusive. It was an old fashioned approach, not as contemporary in thought as many would want, but I believe he was doing the best he could under the context of how he was reared and the world he grew up in. For Romney, it was probably even a “liberal” thing to do.

Today women occupy high levels of government and business not out of the need to meet quotas, but because they deserve it and are the ones most worthy of those positions. The pace has been too slow on equal pay, and women need to be more readily lumped into the general hiring population rather than looked at as a special segment. These things are being addressed, sometimes with reluctance, sometimes with passion, but they are being addressed. Mitt in his plodding dinosaur way was trying to demonstrate this, and deserves credit for it. Since my birth, a great deal of progress has been made and I feel the greatest strides taken. What remains are loose ends and detail work that will only be accomplished in the passage of time. We will recognize the completion of this societal metamorphosis, the spreading of the butterfly’s wings when we stop counting heads, when our candidate binders are filled with the resumes of people and not men and women, when the red necks have been subdued, and when we dinosaurs die off leaving a better planet in our well worn tracks.

FALLOUT

I worry about the amount fear mongering in this election season. Rhetoric has been less about platform and strategy and more about how much the other candidate will impact your life and ruin the United States and the now ill-defined American dream. It is not so much for the voters that I worry but for the children who are inadvertently exposed to negative campaigning through television, news, and the internet. If voters cave to the pressures of fear mongering, then to an extent we get what we deserve, but children do not have the filters that come with age and experience to keep away the effects of potentially harmful words.
I have not investigated nor interviewed anyone to know if this worry is real or imagined. It is simply a feeling that has arisen from my own innocent youth and the irrational (but real enough to me) fears I had as a boy.
In the late sixties, I was on the downhill side of my formative single digit years. This country’s feelings toward the Vietnam War were just beginning to simmer and boil. For this conflict, the draft was still in force in the nation. The draft that mandatory instrument by which the armed services replenished itself. At the time, the draft was held by lottery. Birthdates were drawn at random, the sooner your birthday was picked, then the greater the chance of your receiving a draft notice.

The draft was a fearful thing, not just because there was a war, but because it was the first war to be covered on television. This was the first war the press could report what was happening to US troops as it occurred. This was the first war where the public could make up its mind based on information that was not purely government spun.
The fear generated by the horror of the Vietnam War for a child my age was more nebulous, more a sense in the gut. Adults can more easily attach concrete ideas to their worries, and therefore know better what they are afraid of. Still the idea of the war and what potentially fighting in it could mean scared me, particularly when adults or talking heads discussed it within earshot.
One night the family was watching television (on one of the only three networks which were available in that fog enshrouded era) the draft lottery was being broadcast. I new nothing about draft eligible age, I knew only that the sooner your birth date was picked, the sooner you would go off to war. I was also aware that war as seen on the news was not heroic and bloodless as war as on shown a television show like "The Rat Patrol."
The feeling in the den was somber, there was nothing jovial in watching the call to the service of one's nation. Silently we watched as the lottery drawing was made. The first date picked, then the second, then mine, then the fourth, and on down the line. I am sure my birthday being drawn third elicited some smart-aleck comment from one of my siblings followed by laughter, but I was struck ice cold.
At the time no one knew it, but I was afraid, and because my parents never made mention of what I felt to be my upcoming draft notice, I didn't feel I could talk to them. I had to appear as brave as I thought they obviously thought I was. For months (far beyond my normal child's attention span should have been good for), I was afraid that the mail was carrying a letter for me from a grateful president. I was afraid I would be going far from everything I knew to a violent world pictured in black and white on the other side of the television screen.
Of course I was never drafted, and the knot in my belly eventually left me, but the memory endures. It lives on in me as an example of how something that is uttered can scar the formative mind. Children are not always self-aware enough to question what adults say. We don't keep this in mind enough and this doubly true for politicians. They are far more interested in obtaining or maintaining power by scaring the electorate and degrading their rival, than making a case based solely on their strengths and positions.

The Mob Rules

Life is sometimes violent and incomprehensible.  Such has been the case since September 11, 2001 stripped Americans of their innocence, opening eyes to global realities, and opening hearts to fear and paranoia.  Now eleven years to the day in the midst of our mourning and remembrance, the US Consulate in Libya has been attacked leaving three embassy staff dead including our Ambassador.

The inevitable result of such an action by Islamic extremist has been a measured reaction by the government and second guessing and knee jerk reaction from without the executive branch.  It is the second guessing and gut reactions that worry me more than the attack.  Of course I am outraged and angered by the murder of our representatives abroad.  I also believe that such actions by enemies are taken not to make a point, but to derive specific responses that broaden their base and weaken the already shaky perceptions of the United States.

The immediate criticisms of the Executive Branch’s handling of this current act of terror is more politically than practically motivated.  The degree to which Governor Romney has attacked the Obama administration already shows a lack of geo-political vision for the larger picture by putting crass nationalism ahead of any substantive thought on the issue.  Today one of Governor Romney’s sons was interviewed in regards to this on 850 KOA radio out of Denver.  He said that his Father was just expressing his outrage over what he believed to be a demonstration of an incoherent international policy.  Outrage can be understood, but instant criticism before all the facts are out and understood is not how a global leader should respond, and at its worst seems an action of opportunism rather than a demonstration of capabilities.

Meanwhile, the gut response of some of some of the populace has been a call for a more dogged effort to hunt down and kill all Islamic extremists (a very good friend of mine made such a comment recently).  Even on its face and in the simplest terms this does not seem possible or practical.  Throughout the history of the world, oppression has only resulted in revolt and violence, and a more sustainable peace has been best achieved by inclusion rather than destruction of enemies.

Simply setting the special forces at our command loose for wholesale slaughter of a gorilla foe may result in a momentary weakening of that foe, but more critically would draw even more people to their cause by the martyrdom it would create.  By reacting with unrestrained vengeance, we play into the hands of the extremist instead of effectively combatting and negating them.

Both sides of our predominantly bipartisan political system share blame in current affairs.  Too often we react with short term goals in mind and insufficient thought given to long term consequences.  Policies of both Democrats and Republicans have resulted in failed nation building, and worse the deaths of American soldiers and citizens spanning more than a decade since we first adopted those policies to make us safer.

Show anger and indignation, but also take time to think.  I don’t have answers, but I am also not running out to kill Islamic extremist with an AR-15 and thousands of rounds of ammunition so easily obtained from gun shows and the internet.  That such atrocities are still being dealt to us only shows us that our policies over the past decade or longer are seriously flawed in some fashion.  If we do not search out and address these flaws, anger and violence will still be our true masters, and the cycle of terror and fear will continue.