Hard Times

I haven't written in a while. Many reasons. I'm angry and frustrated but there is so much anger and frustration out there that I'm afraid I might just tip the balance, break the camel's back. No, not really. It's just that there is so much written today on the Internet and so many people sharing my views and they have so much more real knowledge of the issues and complexities - I'll just let them write and I'll try to do something else.

I could write about my morning walk - trailing a woman with her standard poodle for a few minutes when about 6 quail cross the road, not 20 feet in front of the poodle, and the dog doesn't flinch, doesn't break stride, doesn't even turn his head to look! Talk about self control. Or the building rain clouds and cool morning breeze - first morning I didn't need a hat to keep out the sun. Could this be the start of autumn - for real? Or the book I didn't listen to on my iPod because I realized that I had taken it out of the library and listened to it a little over a year ago - it sounded a little familiar at first when I started to listen to it at the gym - had I heard it before? did I see the movie version? was it just like a case of deja vu and I only thought I had heard it before? I went online and checked my history at the library web site - am I risking possible government spying on my reading record by allowing them to keep my history? In the past couple of years I've re-read Fahrenheit 451 and books by authors with foreign names and I just took out Kafka on CD - obviously a security risk. Anyway, they should have a routine in the library software that alerts you if you're taking out something you've already taken out once before and let you decide if you really want to borrow it again. For people like me with dying brain cells - this isn't the first time I've found myself reading or listening to a book for the second time. Reminds me of a couple times years ago when I still rented x-rated movies and found myself watching the same movie again - of course it's hard to tell with some of these if it's actually the same movie since the actors, story lines and action is pretty much the same from one movie to another. But I digress. Instead of listening to a book on my iPod, I listened to a lovely musical album of Spanish-Jewish songs. It was a very nice walk.

I could write about the inordinate amount of sake, beer and chocolate martinis I drank last night and the feeling that came over me about a half hour after getting home - thankfully the bed was not too far away and I immediately passed out and next thing I know, it's 2:30 in the morning and my head is about to explode and then after taking a large dose of aspirin, falling back into another bout of unconsciousness until waking 4 hours later and feeling fine and then taking the aforementioned walk.

So maybe I'll just write about experiences and if nobody reads it or nobody cares about it, so what? At least I'll be writing.

Oh God!

Please don't get me started. There are many more eloquent writers on the subject of religion. I'm just another angry atheist. Well maybe not angry, maybe disgusted is a better description. Religion and politics. Do I really want a president (or vice-president) who believes we should teach creationism (pardon me, now it's called 'intelligent design') in public school? And how about ending every speech with "god bless you and god bless the USA!" And once again it isn't just the Republicans who 'pander' to the religious - although they do seem to have a little better know how.

I may be misquoting Richard Dawkins, but I think it's apparently easier to be elected to public office in the USA if you're a Tennessee Serpent Handling Pentecostal than an Atheist. Somehow, an irrational belief in god makes you a better candidate - and that's god, not gods - if you believe in one it's okay, but more than one is blasphemy - almost as bad as none. And you'd better watch who you believe is this god's true prophet or son or whatever. I wonder who the general public would choose if it were a three way race between a Hindu, a Muslim, or, "god forbid", an Atheist!

I really don't want to offend any believers (well, maybe I don't mind offending some) - just can we keep religion out of the political arena? There are lots of wonderful people in the world who believe in some form of god or creator (some of my best friends...) but please, keep it to yourself! Sure, there are lots of unanswered questions in the universe and if you want to substitute the letters "god" for "x", fine. But do you have to give "x" all of those other attributes? And stop building giant corporate organizations in the name of religion.

And while I'm on the subject, somehow religions have tax-exempt status. A concept that has always bothered me. Apparently the argument is that they have historically had tax exemptions; that subjecting them to taxation would entangle government and religion; and finally, that they are of a class of organizations that perform charitable deeds for which the government would have to pay if they did not exist, therefore it's like a "break even" situation. Furthermore, they may speak all they want about political, social, and moral issues, but they must avoid statements about the individual candidates or else they will lose their tax exemption.

So, the Catholic Bishops in Arizona can tell their parishioners to vote for a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman without fear of taxation. And they can even tell them to support candidates who also hold this view - just don't name names - and still not be taxed. The church can espouse discrimination against homosexuals, it can support laws restricting a woman's rights on reproductive issues, and it can make blanket statements supporting candidates who affirm their views. And they can't be taxed and your contribution to this church is tax deductible. What a deal!

Once again, I could go on ranting against organized religion, but that will have to be some other time.

Post-Convention (Democratic) Thoughts

Well, I was inspired. I want to go out and canvas my neighborhood and go to a rally and put a sign in my front yard (Homeowners Association permission, please). I'm kind of an emotional guy, so all the speeches and videos and music tend to cause tears to well up in my eyes and I get goose bumps - these presentations are designed for people like me. But so are the Budweiser commercials with the Dalmatian and the Clydesdale and the Rocky theme. That doesn't mean that I've converted to Republican or Libertarian - they use the same tactics. What I'm trying to say is that the electoral process has degenerated over the years to a huge ad campaign. Like the Olympics. Heart-breaking stories of politicians (athletes, horses) overcoming great odds (prison camps, single parent upbringing, flooded gymnasiums, horse colic?) to become the candidates of their parties (gold medal winner, pulling the beer truck) and reap great rewards like book deals or Nike contracts or Viagra ads.

I guess we'll never have another Lincoln-Douglas debate. Not enough sound bites. No pundits to immediately comment on the speeches to tell us what they really said and what we should believe (and when did we start using this term, pundit, to describe anyone with name recognition or a loud voice and an opinion about a candidate or issue? I thought it was used to describe a scholar or sage.) Can you imagine a forum where the candidates laid out their respective positions on issues in full sentences - paragraphs, even. And we get to judge their positions without other people interpreting them for us. And maybe just in print or on the radio so we don't get to see their height or weight or make-up or skin color or perspiration on their upper lips or five o'clock shadow (not that I'd want Nixon to defeat Kennedy!)

But my main point is that we have created another industry in this country - the election industry. Can you imagine the economic impact of all of the election processes starting at local elections and working up to the every four year presidential cycle? The ad revenues from print and TV, the pollsters, the "pundits", the news teams, the printers and everything else that goes into this process. It's an amazing phenomenon in this country, this creation of "industries". We did it with the "War on Drugs" and "Homeland Security" and a whole industry built around criminal incarceration and, of course, the most famous industry of all, the "Defense Industry" or should we call it the "Offense Industry" or the "Arms Supply Industry". What happens is that we become so dependent on these industries for our livelihoods, that we can never get rid of them.

Which brings us to the Republican Convention. I can't wait!

My First Blog

Bear with me - I've never blogged before. I'm the type of guy who reads letters to the editor and says "right on!" or "you're crazy!" and then starts to formulate my own response but then gets tangled in arguments and counter-arguments and never actually writes a letter. Hence the title of this blog. Don't get me wrong, I have lots of firm ideas on how the world should be run, it's just that I understand that in many cases there are very few "facts" and lots of "opinions" and when I try to justify my stance, I get wrapped up in all the nuances and subtleties and find myself in a cave with lots of paths to follow and I'm not sure which one leads to the air and light. Know what I mean? And not only that, but I'm as biased as anyone else I know and probably put more weight on things that agree with me and less on those that don't.

So, what it all boils down to is that I'm a "Compassionate Liberal" (forgive me!) I'm probably as far left as Dennis Kucinich (in 2004, on an Internet political site, he was the candidates whose views I matched 100%). But, when I try to express my views in a public forum, I start to see all these grey areas and I see the other side of the argument and I start trying to answer those other arguments in my head and then I never actually write anything!

Take Georgia for instance (please!) - not the one in the US but the one on the border of Russia. I look on the map and look in the media and all I see is grey. Well not everything I read in the media is grey, it's just that the sum total is grey. But most politicians can't be perceived as seeing grey - they must be decisive where decisive means identifying one side of the argument as wrong or evil and the other side as right or good and indecisive means "wait a second, let's look at this situation and talk about it and not jump to conclusions." So where is the right and wrong in Georgia? I don't think there really is a right and a wrong. What happened is that people got killed and injured and that's wrong - but whose fault is it? How far back in history do you want to go to determine whose fault it is? What would you do if you were Georgia? If you were Russia? If you were the United States? How about The Republic of Texas and the Mexican-American War? The Cuban Missile Crisis? Salvador Allende in Chile? Saddam Hussein in Iraq? No, obviously these things aren't all equal, they're just other situations where people don't see eye-to-eye on what's right and what's wrong. And I could go on.

But I won't for now. Now I'll just go and watch the news and throw shoes at the TV.