Politics

BELIEVE….

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BELIEVE IN MUSIC, BELIEVE IN BALTIMORE…AND BELIEVE IN OPPORTUNITIES

I recently watched Meredith Vieira. Ordinarily this is something I rarely do, much less admit to doing. I was not really paying attention until my wife forced me to watch a segment. I am an old, set-in-his-ways, white guy and am rarely moved by anything other than my bowels…AND young people doing well. It is likely to be the retired teacher in me. I was moved this morning as I watched a group of young people of color singing about their belief in Baltimore and their white teacher explaining how they had managed to rise above the fear and hatred derived from the riots which occurred in the Baltimore Protest this past April. Their manner of elevation? Music…and opportunity.

To quote from their web site, “’Believe in Music’ is a Living Classroom’s program that aims to uplift underprivileged Baltimore City students academically, culturally, and spiritually, while promoting self-expression and community awareness through music education. Through the program, students will foster a deep connection with music in their own lives, and gain the tools to be able express their culture, struggles, and triumphs through music. It is our hope that students will come away from the program seeing music as a way to uplift themselves as well as their community.” This program began with seven students in a closet and has grown to over seventy-five per day…no longer in a closet. Someone is doing something right.

These kids are the same “thugs, savages and killers” TO BE who are maligned by racist trolls on social media and quite possibly by certain presidential candidates. These particular children were simply looking for an “opportunity.” This is something that those of us with “white privilege” believe they, the students, already have.

The word “opportunity” continues to resonate in my mind. I had opportunities. Those opportunities were part of my “white privilege.” Before you attack me, my grandparents began their married lives as famers “on the lien” and my parents were textile mill workers. My father actually drew his last breath on a weave room floor. I had a very humble upbringing and had to work to help put myself through college. No one gave me anything other than an “opportunity.” Despite my lack of privilege, I do understand white privilege has nothing to do with wealth…and lack of wealth and hard work does not eradicate it. White privilege has more to do with “opportunity” than with poverty and hard work. I doubt seriously a black kid with my grades or upbringing would have been given the time of day…much less an “opportunity.” According to the Oxford on Line Dictionary: privilege is “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.” White people take their privilege of being white for granted. Being able to take it for granted IS white privilege. We take it SO for granted we ignore the fact our white privilege actually exists. Because of ignorance we believe that all children have the same opportunities when in fact, many don’t. We further invoke all types of aging stereotypes to explain it away instead of working together to provide “opportunities” for all.

Being an old, set-in-his-ways, white man, I also believe that you can’t solve problems by throwing money at something hoping it will go away or by ignoring that a problem exists. I have had plenty of practice ignoring problems and they do not go away, they only get worse. I would ask the question, “What opportunities are we providing?” What opportunities actually help people rise above whatever holds us back, whether it be social, economic, racial or cultural? If some program doesn’t provide for those opportunities maybe we should re-think it and quit throwing money at it in favor of something that does.

We can pay now or we can pay later. There is going to be a price tag on good or bad government, good choices or bad. Investing “good money” in our youth and providing opportunities now may make it possible to invest less “bad money” in the future. I would rather our government invest our tax monies in opportunities that programs such as “Believe in Music” provide rather than investing in new prisons to house those who fall through the cracks because they have no opportunities. But everyone has equal opportunities, our government says so. No that is just our white privilege showing its racist petticoats.

“DIVIDE ET IMPERA”

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No one knows with certainty who said it first…”Divide and Rule.” Philip of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great, King Louie XI of France and Machiavelli all used it. It has been attributed to Julius Caesar and Sun Tzu’s ART OF WAR. It has also been misquoted in translation to mean “Divide and Conquer.” For my purposes, this particular translation works fine. You might want to consider another famous quote, this one from Abraham Lincoln, “A house divided cannot stand.” They are both related.

We are up to our chins in a metaphorical swamp loaded with hungry alligators and we are doing nothing to drain it, except to point fingers and blame each other for not draining the swamp sooner or causing the swamp to fill up originally. Honestly! Does it matter how the alligators got into the swamp or who is to blame? We are past the point of blame but we continue to feed the alligators anyway.

Has anyone thought that our “Islamophobia” might be doing exactly what ISIS wants? Driving a wedge between the people of the United States. Dividing and possibly creating more “soldiers” for ISIS and more fear for rest of us, domestic Muslims included. ISIS would not want to do that would they? I have read so many divisive post that are being shared by people that I thought were good Christians and intelligent people. Good Christian BIGOTS it would seem. RACISM in the name of Christ. Towel heads, goat fuckers, jokes about burning Mosques and “bed sheets” burning. Reminds me of the Fifties and Sixties and WE, AS GOOD CHRISTIANS, should be ashamed. Actually it reminds me more of Nazi propaganda films produced prior to World War Two designed and well executed to turn the German population against Jews. Even our presidential candidates are proposing closing Mosques or forcing Muslims to wear identification. How very Nazi of them. I know there is no law, other than Christ’s law, preventing someone from being bigoted or racist but we need to understand our enemy and focus on defeating him. Turning our own Muslim population against us does not provide us with a means to that end. Should we consider where these post are coming from? ISIS has proven to have the technological expertise to introduce such division although I am not sure they need to. I still believe our greatest enemy is ourselves and someone’s propaganda machine is working overtime.

We have myriad of problems facing us and most are of our own creation, including ISIS. How do we solve them? One at a time and it must begin with the defeat of ISIS and not the alienation of our population. It’s not about Muslims, Christians or Jews, blacks, whites or any other race. It is not about protesting college students or about abusive rhetoric, nor for that matter…any rhetoric. It’s about humans becoming unified as Americans against one enemy that is not us.

THE NEW NORMAL…AND IT IS QUITE ABNORMAL

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Several decades ago I would find myself sitting in a freshman English class trying to translate the Old English of the Canterbury Tales into country redneck. I was having no success when the air raid siren in downtown Newberry began to blow. It was a test that was repeated every weekday at noon. My English professor, a sometimes not quite sober and always irreverent guy, looked out the window and stated to the class, “If the Rooskies have enough bombs to waste on Newberry, we are f@#$ed. Class is dismissed!”

As I think back I would have to agree with my old professor and also admit that I miss the Soviets. We thought we knew who our enemies were back then, where they were, and how far we could push them. They wore certain uniforms and lived in certain countries. We knew that we were here and they were somewhere over there. It was our government against their government. Our ideologies versus their ideologies. We had theaters of war where an army would be on a particular side.

Then came Vietnam and the end of our “American Exceptionalism.” Even though the Russians were still involved and were our greatest enemy the Cold War environment began to change. Suddenly all uniforms were made of the same camouflage material that looked for the world like pajamas and camouflaged to look like everyone else BUT US. We wore the same colors and hats we always had worn but in jungle camo. The fighting took place in a jungle where you could never be quite certain where or who Charlie was. Having said all that we started to sense a blur between the two sides and two sides became three…or more. It was harder to determine just who the enemy was and now the blur has become so exaggerated, it is extremely difficult to separate the “good” guys and the “bad” guys, EVEN ON OUR OWN SIDE.

We cannot really look around and identify our enemies with any certainty with sleeper cells, pretenders, spies, double agents, and even refugees. And we must not forget the US involvement in the formation and training of so many of these groups. There is possibly only one place where we can identify the real troublemakers…we can look in a mirror. To quote Pogo and his creator Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

At least back in the 60’s there were air raid sirens that let you know something might be getting ready to happen. If you were lucky enough to be near a bomb shelter, you has some small semblance of safety even if it was just in your own mind. You knew that the Russians were coming…and still might. Today, we do not know who, how, when, or what may happen. I think I liked the sirens better.

WHAT I TRULY HATE

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I hate it when South Carolina is on the national evening news because it is rarely news that it is good. North Charleston, Emmanuel, the thousand-year flood, all were horrible and showed the worst and the absolute best that South Carolina and her population have to offer. I really hate our population must continually “step up” to meet these challenges. Seeing the “body slam” that took place at Spring Valley High School was like adding a cherry to the top of a messy banana split. Am I comparing dozens of deaths to a body slam? Absolutely not but I was a teacher, and this troubles me to no end….

Despite what has been written, posted or openly argued, my own personal OPINION, which is based upon forty plus years of teaching, is that ninety percent of the students in our state, and in most states, are upstanding youth who sometimes make mistakes but truly want to learn. Could we do without the other ten percent, probably but what do you do with them. Put them in jail so they can learn a real trade? Do we have an erosion of authority in schools? I will answer that with another question. Do we have an erosion of authority in society? The answer then should be easy. Why would we expect our schools to be any different than our society?

Nothing has really changed over the years except for the bandwagons people have jumped on. There was always the one or two “little Johnnies” in every class that at the end of the day made you shake your head, take a deep breath and say, “If it wasn’t for so and so, fourth period would be a great class.” There were also a few classes that I wondered what the computer was thinking when it spit out my class roster. The difference today is that social media plants “so and so’s” face all over the web or on wide screen televisions and allows us to pontificate about what the underlying causes are and anonymously call students, teachers and police officers whatever descriptor we desire.

There is rarely any good news posted because good news doesn’t sell commercials or internet advertisements. There were other videos posted right after the Spring Valley video came to light so that right wing trolls could point out the decline of society caused by the libtards running the country…or was it vice versa?

What I really hate is the way we jump off of cliffs before any of the facts are available. We make our choices on which side we are going to support and refuse to accept any other course because our choice fits into some preconceived notion that we have. I admit to have fallen into this abyss on occasion. Does the un-named young lady bear any guilt? Yes, but posters were still saying that her parents needed to “tan that butt” hours after it had been revealed her parent had died and she had just been recently put in foster care. Does that give her a free pass? No! Should it be a consideration? I guess it depends on how heartless or bleeding heart you are.

I believe the teacher and the administrator bear guilt to. I don’t know what her discipline record is, AND YOU DON’T EITHER, but I cannot for the life of me believe that the teacher and administrator could not have found a way to defuse the situation before Officer Fields was called in. Teaching is tough and teaching in a big urban high school is tougher but that shouldn’t give people a free pass, and how you handle issues starts at the top and works down.

For those of you who have never set foot in a high school since graduation you may want to curb your suggestions until you get a degree and try it yourselves or maybe try and affect change in your own households. I find it interesting that when it comes to teaching and coaching, any doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, or person, breathing or not, has a better idea on what you should be doing in a classroom. Yes that’s another thing that I hate.

I have toiled at four schools that had SRO’s and found each and every one of those officers to be competent, caring and wearing their badges in the right place. I was always glad to have them, used some of them in my social studies classes when studying law, made cop and teacher jokes with them, and found them to place the students in their care just one small step below their primary function which was to insure safety for all. I believe each and every one would risk their lives to save those same students or teachers. Are there bad apples? Again, are there bad apples in society? Sure, but are we to throw out the baby with the bath water?

Unlike the young lady’s record, Officer Field’s steps and missteps are right out there for all of us to read and comment on. A kind of Dr. Jekyll and Officer “Slam”, he has been decorated and disciplined and we have jumped right out there to suggest his body building led him to PED’s and the “roid rages” that their use implies. None of us have the right or information to comment…but it doesn’t stop us because it is our “opinion.” I was with Officer Fields right up until the body slam and the body “chunk” across the room. DO TRY and explain to me why a two hundred pound plus body builder needed to do that to a sixteen year old who may or may not have slapped at him.

There are no winners in this. Officer Fields has lost his job and a student, who should have acted better, got battered, bruised and probably suspended for her efforts. Well, maybe her lawyer will win a tidy sum for the both of them. All we get to do is debate racism, police brutality, teacher incompetence and the decaying society that we call the United States. That is what I hate the most because while we are able to see the symptoms of our fall, like our government, we are unable to suggest a cure…or maybe suggest too many.

FIFTY YEARS AGO-THE SUMMER OF LOVE

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“I like old hippies so much more than old conservatives.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy

My summer of love was nothing like THE Summer of Love. I’m sure you have all read or seen the history of the Sixties. If you haven’t, you’re just too young. There was no greater decade…or worse one.

The Summer of Love took place in 1967 in and around San Francisco as some one hundred thousand kids descended upon the Haight-Asbury area or what became known as the “Hashbury” region of San Francisco. The summer of 1967 was the culmination of a half-decade of excesses that involved more than just a summer of love, drugs, and music. It exemplified what many of the youth of our country had been moving toward during the entire decade of the Sixties…despite the protests of our parents. Many but not all. I was oblivious.

I was caught unaware of what was going on in San Francisco. I saw a few mentions of “hippies” on the evening news hosted by “the most trusted man in the United States,” Walter Cronkite. Dirty, long haired, flower wearing and dope using, they were celebrating “free love” while protesting the Vietnam War, wishing to “make love, not war” while “wearing flowers in their hair.”

Many of my friends spoke of “dirty” hippies who were tearing our country down with their protests. I couldn’t understand the disdain, making love sounded a lot better than making war. After two divorces I now realize that there is only a thin line between the two and that the free love mantra of the period was anything but free.

Despite the ongoing Cold War and the assassination of President Kennedy, the early Sixties were a period of hope. The Cuban Missile Crisis was behind us, and we still believed in the American Exceptionalism of World War Two. The young Americans, the Baby Boomers, found a role model in the youthful president, John F. Kennedy, and the sorrow of his loss did little to dim the hope of the period.

His death heightening our hopes making the failures at the end of the Sixties that much harder to take. There were plenty of causes to fight for, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Gay Rights, Native American Rights, “the Right to Party” …wrong generation but we did our share…but not in Indian Land, South Carolina.

Indian Land was still about the “status quo,” working class families either toiling at local textile mills or in agriculture related endeavors, most of whom who still believed in the mantra “our government right or wrong.” Vietnam and Watergate would change all those beliefs and more for my generation.

Vietnam would change us in ways that I don’t think we understood even though most of the denizens of my small community continued to support the war to its bloody end. I would support it until opening a new chapter of my life at the “non-hot bed of political and social change,” Newberry College and was glad to have received my 2S deferment.

My departure for Newberry would coincide with the year 1968. This retired history teacher has always believed that 1968 was one of those years that ranks with other significant years like 1776, 1861, 1917 and 1941. What made it significant was the fact that despite the divisiveness of the country, we survived as a nation. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, Mai Lai, the Tet offensive, and the worst damnation the war would receive, Walter Cronkite said we couldn’t win, and he was right.

Protests raged, exploding during the Democratic Presidential Convention in Chicago and at colleges across the US including South Carolina State where three protesters were shot and killed by the police. Somehow our government held on, right through the Sixties into the Seventies and Watergate.

I wonder if some future history teacher will be saying the same about the divisiveness of this year or the next. How much more can our hatred for each other grow? Will 2015 or 2016 be the year that we survived despite fighting against ourselves, or will it be the year that the United States became something else?

We are already on borrowed time and the specter of the breakup of the Soviet Union after their excursion into Afghanistan haunts me a bit. I wonder if the war with ISIS is winnable. Deep down I believe that our enemies do not lie outside of our borders. How many countries and empires have come and gone during our brief history? We have come and I wonder if it is just our time to go.

Don Miller’s author’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

DARK FORCES AMONG US

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DARK FORCES AMONG US

I really miss the good old days – the days when we knew who our enemies were. The days when a lab experience involving sodium and water gone wrong could be laughed at; when potato guns and exploding gas-filled hydrogen balloons were tools used to engage students instead of weapons of potential terrorist activities. When fertilizer was fertilizer and not a potential bomb. I also hate it when a kid walking into a school with a clock gets arrested. I understand it and agree completely with what the school did because of the dark times that we live in. It hurts me to have to say that. It also hurts me to see the venom directed toward a child named Ahmed and a president named Barack in the aftermath. This is our Christian society?

It seems that everything provokes an argument. Not an argument waiting to happen but argument that already exists. I visualize both the far left and far right-wingers waiting for POTUS to finish his morning poop so they can argue over the consistency of his stool and whether it is light or dark enough, firm enough or soft enough, or whether it does or does not contain enough pork to prove that he is or is not a Muslim. No, I don’t believe he is a Muslim. I do believe he was born in the United States. Those of you who disagree have fallen under the influence of dark forces. We are six and one-half years into his presidency. You are beating a dead mule and it stinks!

I have always considered myself a moderate, center of the road kind of guy. I CAN’T FIND THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD anymore! I know that the middle still exists and that the majority of the people of the United States are there. But where is it and why are we so quiet?

I guess I have gotten “jaded” in my old age. WHERE IS THE SO-CALLED MORAL MAJORITY? I don’t mean the hate-spewing far right, in their own mind, moral majority. You do realize in another time, Hitler was firmly on the far right. How did that work out for him and the world? Yes, I did compare SOME CHRISTIANS to Hitler. They are the ones who hate lesbians and gays, Jews, Muslims and blacks with a venom I hope I never understand. They also believe that the Second Amendment entitles them to purchase a fully-armed tank or an ICBM.

A post piqued my interest and, in search of truth, I found myself on a site called TruthTV.US. I’ll be honest, after looking at it, I feel a little dirty and in need of a shower. I had the same feeling years ago when I researched the American Communist Party for a lesson plan I was doing, not that I was thinking about joining. I hope that Homeland Security was not monitoring me this time. On this site I saw videos by David Duke, a video entitled “The Monkey Who Became President”, and all types of racial, cultural and government hate-spewing. The problem rattling around in my head is that some of their tenets and videos I saw seem to be in line with posts on Facebook from people I care about.

Dark forces have kidnapped the middle! Within two hours of identifying the UCC shooter I saw posts “proving” that he was a Muslim, citing a link on a social media account (Breitbart). Others (Examiner and Huffington Post) were claiming he was a Nazi fanatic with ties to the IRA. Later a third (The Inquisitr) quoted from the shooter’s “manifesto” and described him as being a young man who “would die friendless and a virgin.” There was a time when I feared the same thing but I never shot anyone. Far right versus far left and all are lies or, at least, misinformation…except for The Inquisitr. Other news services reported he was a hater of organized religion and a misguided, mentally ill man with a bunch of guns. Another site accused CNN of “lightening” his picture to make him look more “white.” His dad is white but why should it matter? Well, the right says it should matter even though lately most school shootings have been carried out by mentally ill white kids. His mother is black and there are plenty of left-leaning sites blaming her for his love for guns and the Second Amendment. FACT: He was a mentally disturbed, Army washout who was allowed to play with too many guns and those nine people are still dead. Dark forces, including our politicians, are pushing their agendas while the bodies had yet to be buried.

The one post that really upset me was the one from the European Union Times which reported the shooter’s name had been on a terrorist list offered to us by the Russians, a list President Obama refused to accept. I have seen nothing to support it yet a former teaching bud shared the post. I’m sure he wasn’t the only one but he should know better. Do you think the Russians sent President Obama an email warning him? We ARE getting along so well. The European Union Times was characterized by Rational Wiki as xenophobic, anti-Sematic, and racist, as well as, Obama bashers. Then there is the question as to how reliable is Rational Wiki? Another question is how xenophobic, anti-Sematic, and racist are the people sharing this.

There are dark forces hiding in every shadow. Why do WE ALLOW these dark forces to do their dirty work? Do we not realize that it is our country that they are trying to destroy? A Facebook friend of mine, Don McCorkle, posted a quote about a mental malady called cognitive dissonance proposed by Franz Fanon, a psychoanalyst.

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”

Some of us are allowing dark forces to play on our prejudices, our preconceptions, and our fears thus feeding our cognitive dissonance. Some are blindly passing off lies as the truth without one bit of research or conscience. Many times these lies are spread in the name of God. There are liars and agitators who are poisoning our way of life and turning us against each other in hopes that we will destroy ourselves and we are allowing it. Somehow the rational middle must get control of their imaginations and address their fears before that happens. We who have not been duped must hasten to expose these dark forces to the cleansing light of day before it is too late.
Image from http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/grim-reaper-dad-spooked-after-6268150

WHAT ARE I?

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WHAT ARE I?
I have been involved in a Facebook argument of Biblical proportions…only because I am having such a flood of emotions. Just a small argument, not Biblical at all I guess, although one of my protagonists might wish that a Biblical flood would wash me away. He is so far right I can see left from where he is and it causes me to question my own political position. I no longer know what I am. I used to know. Now I am at a loss. Sixty-five and I don’t know what I are! I need a tag. NO! Not a skin tag. I need a political tag. I used to say that I was a moderate but I just don’t know. Just an average, middle of the road kind of Joe who voted with his heart and not a party. I have voted in eleven presidential elections, five times Republican, five times Democrat and once I threw my vote away and wrote in Alfred E. Newman. Now I feel I need a tag. Libtard, right wing storm trooper. I just don’t know. “They gotta name for the winners in the world. I want a name when I lose. They call Alabama the Crimson Tide. Call me Deacon Blues.” Naaa. It’s a good Steely Dan tune but it just doesn’t work BECAUSE I AM NOT A LOSER…maybe.
Okay, let’s try to figure it out. Y’all will help right? So let’s begin. Shall we? I believe that our borders should be defended. Both of them in fact, although not many Canucks seem to be headed south. Was that a derogatory term and should I care in this too PC world? We should not let illegals come in. Deport any immigrants who are criminals. Have a program that fine upstanding citizens-to-be can complete. According to the Facebook posts I’ve seen there may be two of them. When newly created legals complete a twenty-year citizenship program, give them the “brass ring” because they will have earned it…and that includes those anchor babies, too. “No speaky English, no gitty the brass ring!” That makes me a conservative, right? I will go further to say that we should limit the number of legal aliens entering the country. We just have too many people speaking with accents. Right wing storm trooper?
Okay the truth is I do believe we need to defend our borders but how do we fund it? How do we patrol it? Jobs for unemployed veterans? I want vets to have jobs. They deserve them and should be sent to the head of the employment line. How do we pay for an expanded border patrol and the cost of deporting twelve million illegal aliens? Oh, we save it on benefits that we are giving them I guess. Are we going to build Trump’s beautiful tall wall and use my Social Security check to pay for it? ENTITLEMENT? I HAVE SPENT FIFTY YEARS PAYING INTO IT. HOW IS IT AN ENTITLEMENT? No one seems to have an answer for how we are going to pay for the wall. Trump, the self-proclaimed front runner, has said he has a plan but I’m still waiting for him to get back to me on it. Better yet, won’t that wall ruin the view? Oh, Trump did say it would be beautiful. Geeez, what are I?
Guarding our borders includes protecting our shores, doesn’t it? Again I am all for protecting our shores from far, far away. A strong military is what we need. According to The Donald, we must have the most feared military in the world. Didn’t the Kaiser and then Hitler want that, too? “Over there, Over there” …wrong war. We really don’t have any cute Afghanistan ditties to sing. The songs about Afghanistan tend to be dark. According to South Carolina’s “setting son” Lindsay Graham, “We must put more boots on the ground if we want to win.” I agree…if Afghanistan can be won. That’s liberal isn’t it? But what about those twenty thousand boots that represent ten thousand troops? Are the American people going to allow an escalation in the war? I haven’t heard that term since Vietnam because it is a bad word. Libtard I are?
No problem. Pull all our troops out and NUKE THEM. They are just a bunch of “towel heads” and “goat f@#kers.” Turn the whole place into a shiny glass parking lot. While you are at it, take care of those two “I” places that no one can keep straight or find on a map. Sorry, my desire to have a right wing storm trooper tag just went away. I actually saw that sentiment in print. Aside from the lack of humanity, do you really think Putin and his minions are going to allow us to play with nukes in his backyard? Oh, now what are I? Smart I would think.
Another massacre has started the debate on gun control again. Can we not let the bodies cool before we have knee-jerk reactions? Can we not wait to spread rumor until the authorities have a chance to sort things out? Within two hours I heard from the right that the shooter was a Muslim and from the left that he had ties to the IRA. Personally, I think he was a green-skinned illegal alien from a planet in the Luhman binary star system. What he was, was a disturbed young man who killed nine innocent people and not a green-skinned, Muslim radical of Irish decent. My conservative side agrees with leaving the Second Amendment alone. My liberal side whispers that if he had only a knife or a rock we wouldn’t be talking about nine dead. My rational side believes that no one is coming for our guns. Is it too liberal to agree with the recent Winthrop Poll? I found it surprising that South Carolinians agreed with background checks and to extend, if necessary, the present three-day waiting period before taking the gun home. Most agreed with closing some of the gaps with gun shows. I guess my most liberal thought on gun control is that if you need to hunt with an assault rifle, you probably ought to spend that money buying meat rather than hunting for it. Else you will be picking bullets out of its hide all day long!
So, what are I? I don’t think I have figured it out yet. Maybe I should just be like the Popeye of old without the forearms. “I yam what I yam!” I don’t know what I yam either and don’t know how to write the cute little chuckle Popeye had after he said it. To be honest, after the nine deaths in Oregon, I don’t feel like chuckling at all. Maybe what I are is a realist.

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING…

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THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING…
I was six months past my twelfth birthday and really wasn’t sure I would live to see thirteen. Oh there was so much I wanted to do someday. Drive a car, find a girlfriend, walk through those double doors as a high school freshman, find a girlfriend, see Mickey Mantle play at the “House that Ruth Built,” and finally find a girlfriend. But the Cold War was escalating. “Dad, why don’t we have a fallout shelter? Do you think we ought to start digging one?” As he looked up from his crossword puzzle and cocked an eyebrow he said, “Sure. Get started. I’ll tell you when you are deep enough.”
In October of 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis was at its height. Walter Cronkite showed me images of nukes found in Cuba; Kennedy sitting behind his desk in a special broadcast explaining why we were blockading Cuba; Castro and Khrushchev standing with arms raised above their heads holding hands…make that clasping hands. It sounds so much manlier. Uncle Olin and Cousin Hall were reservists and worried they were about to be called up. Some one used the propaganda catch phrase “I’d rather be dead than Red!” Wait just one dang minute! I want that car, that girlfriend and all the other stuff. I’m ten and I’d rather be any color other than dead.
Do you remember Khrushchev during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly banging his shoe on the podium and shouting in Russian, “We will bury you?” This was earlier in the fall of 1960 and on my black and white I could tell he was pissed. It was a reaction to England’s Harold McMillian…or to the Philippine’s Lorenzo Sumulong. Witnesses are unsure as to which. Short, with a close-cropped balding head, he had a large elevated mole around his nose. Despite these unflattering features, when he smiled and wore his reading glasses, he resembled someone’s grandfather. This day he resembled one of the devil’s minions. The scene was an iconic image of very angry person. His threatening statement sent chills through our collective hearts. It is a vivid memory but there are two problems. Problem one was that he might not have banged the shoe at all and his statement more closely translated to “We will outlast you.” The translator might have been a bit overworked at the time. The second problem? We bought into the iconic image and original translation because of our national propaganda machine. Consequently, most of the people from our generation remember it exactly that way. One of the first things I checked on my return to school the next day was the exact location of the yellow and black sign with the odd symbol designating the “Fallout Shelter.” I decided that I would be the first in line to enter.
I watched too much TV back then…still do! There was a short animated film shown on the Ed Sullivan Show called “A Short Vision?” Did you see it? If you have forgotten it or are too young, you still can see it on YouTube because I just did. In 1956 it traumatized an entire generation of children and kept their parents up at night wondering if this was going to be the night that the Soviets dropped the big one. I don’t know about my parents but one child it traumatized was me. Watching it today was almost as scary as it was sixty years ago. For months when a large airplane flew overhead I would shade my eyes and squint looking for red stars instead of white. At bedtime I prayed that “if I die before I wake please don’t let it be a nuclear bomb.” Shortly thereafter we had our first school “Emergency Drill.” That’s what we call them today, the old “duck and cover” drills. In my day it was “In Case of Nuclear Attack….” There were even posters, the kind you put on the wall of your school not the social media type, explaining what to do to insure your survival. I remember instruction one was to “Stand Clear OF Windows.” Two was to “Remove All Items From Your Pockets…” Somewhere down toward the bottom was Six: “Lean Forward and Place Your Head Between Your Legs.” When I got to college I saw a poster that some humorous someone had scrawled an addendum, “and kiss your ass goodbye.” Sound advice I should think.
In late October of 1962 we learned that I actually had a better chance of reaching the age of eleven than I did of finding a girlfriend…or being radioactive dust. The Russian Bear had blinked. They would remove their ICBM’s from Cuba. What our government didn’t tell us until later was that we would also remove our own weapons from Turkey. Oh life was good or, at least, it would go on for a while.
I should have picked better movies to watch. H-Man, The Blob, Godzilla and Rodan were all silly enough not to scare me even if they were made as statements against nuclear weapons. But then I had to watch On The Beach from a book by Nevil Shute. Later I even read the book. Characterized as a post-apocalyptic thriller, my question was “Don’t some people have to live for it to be a post-apocalyptic thriller?” No one survived the movie or the book. No one in the world. Not the stars, the costars, even the third grip died of radiation poisoning or took the easy way out. I would have taken the easy way…maybe. I had nightmares for months about the final scene of empty streets, sports stadiums and old newspapers blowing in the wind. I still have chills as I think about it.
Speaking of blowing in the wind. I wonder how the wind felt for Maj. T. J. “King” Kong as he rode his H- bomb down to its target in Dr. Strangelove. It would activate a Soviet Doomsday Machine causing nuclear explosions all over the world. That would be the actor Slim Pickens pretending to straddle the bomb as it fell to Earth. Little wonder the movie was described as a dark comedy. Yes, it was a real knee-slapper. As far as I know there were no Doomsday Machines but if they did exist, they are probably still around waiting for the North Koreans or Iranians to attack. Failsafe, in which we drop our own bomb on New York City, was another Cold War thriller that would come out the same year. It appears the whole country, or at least movie producers, were concerned about nuclear bombs being detonated. Apparently, no one “learned” from Dr. Strangelove’s sub-title “to stop worrying and love the bomb.”
Several years later I would find myself sitting in a freshman English class trying to translate the Old English of the Canterbury Tales into country redneck. I was having no success when the air raid siren in downtown Newberry began to blow. It was a test that was repeated every weekday at noon. My English professor, a sometimes not quite sober and always irreverent guy, looked out the window and stated to the class, “If the Rooskies have enough bombs to waste on Newberry, we are f@#$ed. Class is dismissed!”
As I think back I would have to agree and also admit that I miss the Soviets. We thought we knew who our enemies were back then, where they were, and how far we could push them. They wore certain uniforms and lived in certain countries. We knew that we were here and they were somewhere over there. It was our government against their government. Our ideologies versus their ideologies. We had theaters of war where an army would be on a particular side.
Then came Vietnam and the end of our “American Exceptionalism.” Even though the Russians were still involved and were our greatest enemy the environment began to change. Suddenly all uniforms were made of the same camouflage material that looked for the world like pajamas and camouflaged them to look like everyone else but us. We wore the same colors and hats we always had worn but in jungle camo. The fighting took place in a jungle where you could never be quite certain where or who Charlie was. Having said all that we started to sense a blur between the two sides and two sides became three…or more. It was harder to determine just who the enemy was and now the blur has become so exaggerated, it is extremely difficult to separate the “good” guys and the “bad” guys, even on our own side.
Today our governments set up factions to overturn other governments or groups of people in the name of democracy and for the pursuit of oil and other resources. Anyone remember the Shah of Iran? You might want to do a little research if you have asked why the Iranians hate us. Once we pull out, we leave a wealth of armaments which is scooped up by the likes of Al Qaeda or Issis. These arms are then used to destroy the very countries we tried to democratize. These people behead the Christian “infidels” and anyone else who does not submit to their sect of Islam. When you study how these radical jihadists were originally trained and funded by the US, you begin to understand the connection between us and them. And they are everywhere. They have no particular uniform or distinction or even a legitimate government. In a sense they are invisible unless they pick up an Islamist flag or yell “Death to America!” Or simply blow up a bomb somewhere. It would seem that the enemies that we made in the name of the Cold War and the Gulf Wars, and the people of the Middle East who we helped to militarize have very long memories of inequities that have taken place.
We cannot really look around and identify our enemies with any certainty with sleeper cells, pretenders, spies, and double agents. And we must not forget the US involvement in the formation and training of so many of these groups. There is possibly only one place where we can identify the real troublemakers…we can look in a mirror. To quote Pogo and his creator Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
At least back in the 60’s there were air raid sirens that let you know something might be getting ready to happen. If you were lucky enough to be near a bomb shelter, you has some small semblance of safety. You knew that the Russians were coming…and still might. Today, we do not know who, how, when, or what may happen. I think I liked the sirens better.
Picture is from https://anotherexistence.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/atom-piece/

THE GAME OF POLITICS

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I have seen right and left wing posts maligning each other. I have watched the circus they call debates. We haven’t even gotten to the campaign ad season and I am already gagging. It is Trump versus Carson…hell Trump versus everyone, the fiasco that is Hillary, Huckabee, Cruz…oh just pick and plug in a name. Part soap opera, part demolition derby. It would be hilarious if they weren’t playing with my life. It reminds me of a really bad athletic event, especially since each party and their supporters are trying to outscore the other without saying anything of substance. It’s awful because there are no rules it would seem. I have a great idea. Let’s make the election process like an athletic event…no, WE WILL make it an athletic event!

First, we need to pick an event that all of the politicians are good at. Lying or talking all day without saying anything is not a spectator sport. Maybe we should pick an event that they are equally bad at. Something like Australian Rules football…no, we need a game that is or was played closer to home…say …ULLAMALIZTLI! Never heard of it? Can’t pronounce it? Perfect! I would say none of our politicians have heard of it either.

Ullamaliztli is the ancient Aztec game that combined basketball,soccer, football, religion, politics and human sacrifice. I LIKE IT! One would really have to believe in his or her party’s platform to risk having their heart, still beating, ripped from their chest and presented for inspection to the gods. I am liking it even more and I am not usually this bloodthirsty. Wait, there may be a problem. Does Donald Trump even have a heart? Maybe we can get Dr. Carson to try to detect one…WITH AN OBSIDIAN KNIFE! Team members could be picked from the most ardent party members in the Senate or House. The winning team would have the right to put their president into office. There should also be a lobbyist or two on each team, picked at random. Since there is human sacrifice involved, we should get rid of that pesky log jam that both parties hold against the other.

Played on a sunken court with a one-hundred to two-hundred foot rock floor, it had eight to eleven-foot high walls that sloped down to the court floor. Walls…I’m having a vision of prison walls, but while Republicans think Hillary should be in prison for her emails, it’s not that kind of wall. Surrounding the court was a seating area where spectators gambled on the outcome. Skulls of sacrificed coaches and teams surrounded the spectator area and looked down on the contestants. Nice motivational tool and right down Hillary’s alley, I would think.

The goal of the game was to put a nine-pound rubber ball through a stone ring hung vertically and located at mid-court. Sounds easy except for the part about not touching the ball with your hands or letting it hit the ground. The game ended when the ball was put through the stone ring – a feat that sometimes took a day or two of continuous play to accomplish. The game was violent, leaving the contestants bruised and bloodied. I can’t help but visualize The Donald running down the court, the wind blowing through his comb-over, getting cross-body blocked by Hilary Clinton or vice versa. Bernie and Ben are way too soft-spoken to get into each other’s grill. That would not work, I guess, because as front runners, they would have to be the coaches. Okay, Pelosi and Boehner, or his replacement, could body block each other. The upside is that somebody is going to lose their heart…if, in fact, they have one to begin with.

The original game was both political and religious in nature. Wars between Aztec cities were known to occur over outcomes. In one instance a winning king was presented a victory garland with a choking cord inside. He was assassinated on the spot.

Again I feel a bit bloodthirsty but the best part of the closing ceremonies would be the religious sacrifice of the losing presidential candidate… I mean the losing coach and possibly the entire team. If incompetence is not a virtue, it would be the entire team. Stewed to the gills on drugs, the losing coach would be held down, chest split open and his still beating heart would be cut from his chest and shown to the gods. The Aztecs believed that if a sacrifice was not made the Sun would not rise the following morning. In today’s political climate, the “Sun” shines very darkly. Could the sacrifices take the place of term limits? In some accounts it might have even been the winning coach who was sacrificed, but who cares as long as “elbows to the teeth” replace the campaign process. Broadcasted live and in living color “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” would have new meanings as the Supreme Court Judges, dressed in black robes and masks, carried out the sacrifice.

Okay, I don’t want Homeland Security or the Secret Service to come calling. I am really just a harmless old coot who is fed up with our political process that is being played out like a cock fight between old moth-eaten hens with no brains…I mean heads. Or if it were football, the game that is our present political system would take twenty-five plays to score…against air. WAIT…BEER SOFTBALL OR BETTER YET, LIQUER SOFTBALL. That might be as funny as the candidates themselves….

THE POWER OF RELIGION

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THE POWER OF RELIGION

There was a time when I considered the ministry. I grew up in a family that was devout but not fundamental or charismatic…especially my grandmother who both lived her religion and could quote to you chapter and verse. Even though I lived in a small rural area, we were a high Methodist church which would be less charismatic than a lot of people’s preconceived notions. That would be high as in liturgy not as in the use of drugs.

My wife says I am religiously repressed whatever that means. Did she just call me “tight assed?” Between my sophomore and junior year, I fell under the influence of my minister, Mr. McAllister. My statement sounds like I was falling under the spell of a cult but that was not the case. He just took an interest in my piety.

During our revivals we tended to become more “hellfire and brimstone” oriented and really got into that “old time religion.” Less “tight assed?” I sometimes think of those revivals during the hot and humid days of August. Our church had no air conditioning, the only air movement coming from the open windows or fifty or sixty Wolfe Funeral home fans waving in the congregation.

During a revival geared to young adults the summer after my junior year we were told that the visiting minister’s wife was in remission from breast cancer although she eventually would succumb to it. She was a graduate of my high school, a local girl several years my senior. Somehow this made her disease more real to me. This younger man of God believed his wife was cured and her wished for recovery became the centerpiece of his sermons. He hammered his reality repeatedly, celebrating his belief that her “cure” was due of the depth of her faith. “CURED I SAY BY THE GRACE OF GA-ODD! CAN I HAVE AN AMEN?”

I can hear him tonight just as I did fifty years ago say, “If your faith has enough depth, you can overcome any sickness, any disease.” I am no more comfortable today than I was fifty years ago. Later, during a gathering for our youth he hammered the same point. He asked for any questions and timid little me raised his hand and asked, “Are you saying that my mother is going to die because her faith is not strong enough?” She had been diagnosed with ALS when I was in my early teens and would succumb to it during my freshman year in college at age forty-eight.

He looked me square in the eyes and said, “Yes, if her faith is not strong enough.” My religious commitment and belief in miracles flew through the open windows and it took a while for them to fly back. It wasn’t that I ceased to believe, I really didn’t. I simply took my religious leanings and locked them away in a deep safe place for later. It was one of those pathways that wound back from my youth. I also didn’t go out and rebel, I waited until my late twenties and early thirties to do that. I hope my old age is as tardy with its arrival as my rebellious age. Well, with my knees, this is a pipe dream.

Despite my wandering pathway back to the light, I still have many questions, not the least of which is how something can be such a powerful good, be used to do such harm? I know the answer is easy on the surface, it’s the human factor and it’s really about religions not Christian beliefs.

It was Gandhi that observed, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” The older I get the more I agree. True Christians follow the teachings of Jesus Christ not the tenants of some religion. It should never be “my God is better than your god.”

What can be bad about “Loving your neighbor or your enemies?” The statement that is quoted often, “More wars have been fought over religion than any other reason” is not true but when ideologies conflict, religion is usually one of those ideologies.

I’ve never been high about religions that play to our fears. The FAR Christian and Far Islamic right are feeding our fears. I am in the middle politically on Muslim refugees but don’t believe that we can afford to take the chance on accepting them. ISIS atrocities and the memory of 911 are just too strong. But what about our own Muslim citizens or the thirty-five hundred Muslim service members, Muslims whose families have lived here peaceably for hundreds of years or who are fighting in the Middle East for our safety?

I asked that question on Facebook and I don’t guess I was surprised by the response considering other posts that I have seen. Visions of Muslim’s scrambling aboard boats attempting to avoid concentration camps enter my mind. That could not occur in the United States, could it? It was unconstitutional but I remember studying the Japanese “internment” camps during WW II? I’m not sorry that my beliefs won’t let me believe that something like this could happen again. This time to our Muslim population.

My beliefs will not allow me to call my friends abominations either. Conservatives, Liberals, abortionist, anti-abortionist or Gay and Lesbian and homophobes. Yes, I just threw you into the group that you are all defiling or supporting when what I would really like to do is throw you all away. How can good Christians use such terms to describe their neighbors…or non-Christians for that matter? How can good human beings say those things?

This past week, Florida moved to “Don’t say Gay.” Heterosexuals where did homosexuals hurt you? If the practice of homosexuality is a sin that is between a person and their god. If you are not a practicing homosexual, or trans, or pan, it is none of our business.

If the Bible is to be believed, all people are God’s children. If it is not to be believed, all people are human and should be treated as such. Your religion does not trump their humanity.