Pirate Aggro

Placeholder

2010-03-05T20:25:00.001-07:00

A BOT has finally found this blog and has started posting anonymous “comments” advertising this or that useless product. So I logged on to cut back the brush a bit and to delete the BOT comments. The place really has overgrown. Half my pictures are no longer there. It’s unbelievable that it has been more than a year since my last posting.

Still, I want to hold on to this blog and I would like to blog again some day, just not about politics. I honestly thought that the poisonous political climate in this country would begin to improve with better, more positive leadership. Instead it has become more poisonous, more irrational. The result is that I don’t pay very close attention any more. I know the headlines but not the details. I listen to more jazz and less NPR. There is no sense in being upset. What is happening is entirely out of my control. Politics is the arena for the powerful, the extreme, and the loud. My impact on society is through individual intervention. For now, the blog will remain dormant until I can find a better use for it.

#44

2009-01-20T18:58:00.002-07:00

I’ve obviously fallen off the blogging band wagon. I felt I had to write a few lines on this historic day. I watched the inauguration today on television with my son sleeping in my arms. Twice I felt tears come into my eyes. Once When Aretha Franklin sang My Country Tis of Thee, and again when the camera showed the ecstatic faces in the crowd, many of them stained with tears of their own.

Obama was eloquent and inspiring as usual. He told the nation that we face many problems and that they won’t be easy to solve but that these challenges will be met. He called on Americans to put aside petty grievances and worn out dogmas and unite in a common purpose and become the leaders of the world again. He said we needed to pick ourselves up and move forward. He talked about the sacrifices our ancestors have made that led America to this point.

I felt a physical sense of relief as Bush climbed onto his helicopter and flew away from the capital. I’d expected a more dramatic exit from Bush and Cheney, given everything that we have seen from them in the last eight years. Instead they both seemed diminished and smaller. Their administration ends with a whimper, and few are sad to see them go.

They go now to their lives of privilege. They will collect $500,000 per speaking engagement. They will continue to amass wealth. They will continue to push their ideology through their think tanks and other activities. Never again, though, will they have the ability to affect so many lives negatively. Never again will they have their hands on the levers of power in the same way. The only people who will listen to them now will be those who share their narrow view of the world and humanity. It appears that constituency is shrinking rapidly.

It’s important that I distinguish the former administration from what I will call mainline conservatives or Republicans. Much of what we have seen from Bush and his ilk doesn’t mesh with true conservatism. All that I hear in the media says that Obama’s inauguration marks a new beginning for Republicans too. They view this as a chance to renew, a chance to clarify, and chance to be a constructive critic to the new President.

I am so happy and so proud to be alive at this moment of history. Not only has the first African American become president, a historic achievement in itself, but there is a feeling that a new era has begun. Obama won’t work miracles, but he will be a thoughtful and unifying President, and there is at least the chance for greatness.

Did It Really Happen?

2008-11-15T18:23:00.002-07:00

I still have a sense of unreality about the election. I watched the election returns come in from a webcast from WestPoint that my nephew was taking part in. Early in the evening the returns showed McCain with 51% of the popular vote and I thought, “here we go… Its going to be 2000 all over again.” After that point though, Obama pulled ahead and the margin between Obama and McCain kept getting wider and wider. WestPoint called the election about an hour before the national media.

Then I went and watched McCain give his concession speech which, I admit, made me feel a little sorry for him since this was his last chance at the Oval Office. McCain showed class and dignity even if his supporters who were listening did not.

Later I watched Obama give what I’m sure will be a historic speech. I was overcome with a sense of relief. I felt like crying as I looked at the faces of the people there in Chicago. I was particularly touched by the older African Americans who know the sacrifices that were made to bring us to this point.

A friend of mine recently told me that he did cry that night. He told me that a colleague of his commented that he was crying because he had been suffering. I guess it’s true. Everyone has suffered through the current administration. Not just Democrats and progressives but true conservatives too. The world has suffered from a world leader who refused to engage. It’s over now. Bush will be gone in January and I doubt there are many who will miss him no matter what their political allegiances are.

I hope that we are headed into a period of reconciliation. Of course there will be division and there will be differences of opinion. I just hope that the political atmosphere in the US and in the world will be less poisonous.

I am so happy to be alive to witness this moment in history and to have been on the side of change.

A Long Walk Does the Soul Some Good

2008-11-03T13:14:00.002-07:00

A week ago yesterday, my wife, our two kids, my sister, her three boys, my parents, and I attempted to see Barack Obama speak at a rally on the campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins. First we went to a park and ride location north of Fort Collins and took a bus to CSU. The bus dropped us at the mid-point of the line leading into The Oval, the central park on the CSU campus were the rally was to be held. We started walking the line which stood six deep along the outside of the campus, passing hundreds and then thousands of people, all who had come to see the Democrat’s nominee for President of the United states.

We turned one corner, then another, and another. The line stretched on an on. After we had been walking for about a mile we finally came to the end of the line. Then we watched as thousands more streamed passed to get in line behind us. As the line started to move towards The Oval, it stretched in each direction as far as the eye could see.

At one point as we walked along I looked up at one of the dorm room windows were a student was holding up a John McCain sign and waving at the line filing past his dorm. I waved at him pointing down the line to where it disappeared in the distance, and then the other direction where it did the same, and gave him thumbs up sign. A little further on, just as we entered the campus, a lone protester stood with a sign that read something like “I PUT MY TRUST IN JOE THE PLUMBER.” As we walked past him my dad said “It’s got to be a disappointing day for you.”

We realized at some point that we were never going to make it to The Oval in time, so we headed to the overflow where area people who did not get into rally could hear the speech on a PA. All of us trudged on and on, but there were so many people on the move that we didn’t even make it there, not even close. By the time we were about 300 yards from the overflow area we started meeting people streaming out of the rally after its conclusion.

Although it was disappointing not to be able to hear Obama speak, it was inspiring to see so many people there and to feel that we were a part of something incredible, something historic. Fifty thousand people packed The Oval for the rally, and forty or fifty thousand more were trying to get in. We learned later that, earlier that morning, Obama had drawn a crowd of one-hundred-thousand in Denver at another rally. Two-hundred-thousand people in less than six hours in a traditional red state; I have never seen anything like it in my life, certainly not in Colorado.

The election of Obama truly would be historic. I don’t pretend that it would be the end to the multitude of serious problems that face this country. It would mean, though, that, in this election at least, hope and unity would have won out over fear and division. It would also be a huge step toward fulfilling the dream that Dr. King spoke of forty-five years ago. I wonder if Dr. King saw from the mountain top that a black man would stand to become the leader of the free world one short generation after he dreamed his dream.

I can hardly bear to watch. I will be holding my breath until the result of the election is certain.

Obama in my Back Yard

2008-10-25T18:28:00.002-06:00

I’m going to hear Obama speak in Fort Collins tomorrow if we can get near the place. My parents are going too. Initially my Mom said “I’m not sure if I want to fight the crowds.” My Dad pointed out that it was because they didn’t want to fight the crowds that they did not attend the March on Washington and hear King give his I Have A Dream speech. Dad said “I’m going.” Mom is going too. So are several friends from high school.

It’s a great end to a week that included mountains of kites (the little notes inmates send requesting to talk with me), a bout of who knows what that knocked me on my a A–Double-Snake for a day and still has me feeling a little sick, and initiating a suicide watch literally in the last hour of my shift.

I did however start the week off with hope. Monday I made calls from an Obama field office to voters who had EVER registered Democrat. I made 97 calls. When I asked them who they were voting for all but a couple said “Who do you think, Obama,” as if it was a crazy question.

Things look good but I almost don’t dare to believe it. Anything can happen in a week. And who knows what they might come up with in the next nine days. In the mean time, I’m going to go hear a positive man with a positive message of unity and hope. What more can anyone ask for really?

Proud to be a Leftie

2008-10-22T18:26:00.002-06:00

The hallmark, really the brilliance, of the conservative movement during the Carl Rove era has been to portray liberals as some kind of “other.” They have painted liberals as un-patriotic, un-American, bleeding-hearts, who only want to tax and spend. The result has been a deeply divided nation in which half the population views the other half with suspicion if not contempt.

Part of this strategy has been to turn every liberal into an apologist for their beliefs as if having such an ideology somehow indicated moral or intellectual bankruptcy, instead of a difference of opinion and philosophy. As someone whose ideology tilts heavily to the left, I know that I often feel that I somehow have to explain my lifelong allegiance to liberal ideas and causes, and my reluctance to support conservative ideology. The Carl Rove model says it’s okay to be an unwavering conservative but to be an unwavering liberal shows narrow mindedness and an inability to think.

I realized, suddenly, last week that there is no reason for me to feel that I need to explain or make excuses for my progressive ideology. I am a liberal because liberalism is consistent with my personal morality, a morality, by the way, that came from being raised in one of the most conservative Christian denominations in the United States. I am a progressive because progressive thought fits most closely with my ideas of right and wrong and how others should be treated.

Although I have never voted Republican, I would be open to the chance that someday I might if a Republican candidate came along whose ideas meshed well with my own beliefs. With conservatives so entrenched in a narrow, largely evangelical Christian, ideology, I can’t imagine this happening in the near future. This is exactly the reason Colon Powel endorsed Barack Obama for President last week, although he has always been a staunch Republican, and towed the line of the current administration throughout his tenure as Secretary of State. When giving the endorsement, Powel stated that, essentially, the Republican platform had become too narrow and that Obama represented the best hope for unification and a change in direction from the divisive politics of the past eight years.

That is not to say that John McCain is not a moral person with a strong character. He is. Before the nomination of Sarah Palin as his running mate, I had a great deal of respect for McCain even if I disagreed with him politically. I had the feeling that I could accept him as a Commander In Chief, even if he was not my first choice, because he was a moderate, reasoned, and intelligent man, who was a stark contrast from the current administration.

Governor Palin has been the game changer though. Since she joined the ticket, in an effort to win skeptical evangelicals and Hillary supporters, McCain’s campaign has veered hard to the right and followed the Rove play book of division and distraction. Palin has called supporters outside of Democratic strongholds the “real America” as if those supporting Obama and living in our cities were not Americans. Palin has called for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, an issue sure to thrill evangelicals, but is probably a political dead end, except that it further fractures America.

What is really troubling about Palin, though, is her effort to dehumanize Barack Obama. She has gone out of her way to call into question Obama’s morality, character, and patriotism. She has mocked Obama’s years as a community organizer as a waste of time. She has suggested that Obama palls around with terrorists even though his relationship with William Ayers, the co-founder of the 60’s radical group the Weather Underground, was on a school reform committee whose other members included several prominent Republicans. Governor Palin has dehumanized Obama to the point that some people attending McCain rallies have felt comfortable calling for Obama’s death. While McCain rightly and honorably put a quick stop to these outbursts, and while I don’t believe the people calling for Obama’s death are indicative of Republicans, it is McCain’s choice of Palin as a running mate that invited such people into the tent.

I don’t believe that Obama will be the magic bullet that will solve all America’s problems. If Obama is elected, and that is still a big if in my mind, he will inherit an economy in recession, an unpopular war with no easy exit strategy, another war which is growing increasingly more deadly, and a deeply fractured electorate. He will have his work cut out for him.

I have to believe, however, that Obama does have the best chance of being a unifier and sparking the imagination of America. His election would represent a real historic change in America. Unfortunately, since Palin joined McCain’s ticket I don’t see the possibility of a McCain Presidency unifying the country in the same way.

Intake Interview

2008-10-09T14:37:00.003-06:00

What follows is a representation of the interview that I conduct with inmates as they come into the facility. The inmate is based on hundreds of different people and is typical of the kinds of answers I receive when I conduct the interview. It is not based on any specific person.

The typical interview takes about ten minutes from start to finish if there are no issues such as severe mental health problems or a desire to harm or kill themselves or others.

When I was working in community mental health I used to do intake interviews with my clients but typically they would last an hour. The questions in that psycho-social assessment were all open ended, meaning that they could not be answered with a Yes or No. I would have a pretty clear picture at the end of those interviews of all the different forces affecting the client. I would also have a clue as to where I could begin my intervention.

My intakes here at the Jail mainly have to do with assessing the level of risk the inmate might be to themselves or others. This interview, along with a review of their criminal history, determines where an inmate will be housed, minimum, medium, or maximum or whether the inmate need to be placed on a suicide watch.

For the vast majority of inmates I screen, this is the only contact I will ever have with them. I do, however, work with many inmates after this intake and it is only then that I am able to start asking the kind of questions that help me to really know an inmate and where I might be able to assist them.

DC = Detentions Counselor
ID = Inmate/Detainee

DC: Hello. I’m Pirate Aggro. I’m a Counselor here. I’m just going to ask you some questions that I ask everyone as part of the booking process.

ID: Okay.

DC: When we’re done you can use the phone here to make a local call.

ID: Can I call long distance? I don’t know anyone here.

DC: Well, the phone will call long distance but it will default into a collect call.

ID: Okay.

DC: Is there any one here that you would need to be kept separate from?

ID: I don’t think so.

DC: Anyone you would fight with?

ID: I don’t know anyone here.

DC: Have you ever been the victim of a violent crime like assault or robbery?

ID: I was mugged once.

DC: How long ago was that?

ID: I don’t know… about five years ago I guess.

DC: Have you ever been sexually assaulted?

ID: No, of course not.

DC: I’m sorry… These are questions I ask everyone.

ID: Okay.

DC: What’s your highest level of education?

ID: I finished high school.

DC: How much and how often do you drink alcohol?

ID: About three times a week I guess.

DC: Do you drink until your drunk when you drink?

ID: Of course, why else would I drink?

DC: Do you use drugs?

ID: I smoke pot sometimes.

DC: Anything stronger than that?

ID: No.

DC: Have you ever been treated for a mental health problem.

ID: No.

DC: Nothing like depression?

ID: Oh sure depression. I get depressed.

DC: Have you seen someone for depression in the last two years.

ID: Yes.

DC: Were you prescribed medication?

ID: Yes.

DC: Are you still taking it?

ID: Yes.

DC: What are you taking?

ID: I take Paxil.

DC: Has anyone in your immediate family ever tried to harm or kill themselves.

ID: Yes.

DC: Who was that?

ID: My brother attempted suicide.

DC: It was an attempt?

ID: Yes. He’s still around.

DC: How about you? Have you ever tried to harm or kill yourself.

ID: Well sort of.

DC: How long ago was this?

ID: A couple years ago.

DC: Can you tell me what you did?

ID: I took a bunch of pills. It was stupid. I don’t feel that way now.

DC: Were you hospitalized?

ID: They gave me charcoal. I spent the night and went home the next day.

DC: But they didn’t put you on a suicide watch?

ID: No I don’t think so.

DC: Are you feeling suicidal right now.

ID: Well I don’t feel great.

DC: But are you feeling like you want to hurt yourself?

ID: No. I’m just sad.

DC: Would you tell us if you started feeling suicidal?

ID: Sure, but what good would that do?

DC: Well, we just want to make sure you’re safe while you’re here.

ID: Sure, I’d tell you.

DC: Do you have a religious preference?

ID: I’m a Christian.

DC: Okay, this is a pamphlet on sexual assault awareness.

ID: What! Why are you giving me this? Am I going to be assaulted?

DC: No. This is a pamphlet we give to everyone that comes into the jail.

ID: Oh.

DC: This is a relatively safe facility. It’s not like TV. You will be okay while you are here. This type of thing hardly ever happens here.

ID: Good… Okay.

DC: What’s the longest you have ever been in jail or prison?

ID: I did two years almost back in the 90s.

DC: Was that a prison or jail sentence?

ID: Jail. I’ve never been to prison.

DC: Good. What county was that in?

ID: Adams.

DC: Are you a resident of Colorado?

ID: Yes.

DC: Do you have friends and family here?

ID: Friends, no family. They’re all dead or back in Chicago.

DC: Are you working now?

ID: Well I was. I’ll probably be fired now.

DC: What do you do?

ID: Construction mostly.

DC: How old are you?

ID: I think I’m forty-seven. No, forty-six. I’ll be forty-seven at the end of the month.

DC: Okay, this is a receipt for your personal items. You’ll get these things back when you are released.

ID: Okay.

DC: Do you want to use the phone?

ID: Can I? I thought of someone I can call here.

DC: Okay. Just pick up the phone, dial 1, the area code, and the phone number.

END OF INTERVIEW

In this case I would have continued contact with the Inmate because he reported a suicide attempt within the past five years, and he reported that a blood relitive had also attempted suicide. This statisticly means he is at greater risk for suicide. As a result I would visit with him at lest once a month while he was an inmate here at the jail.

PARANOIA!!!

2008-09-27T18:32:00.002-06:00

I was recently invited to join Facebook by one of my professors from graduate school who was assembling a kind of alumni list of people who had been in his solo performance class. So I signed up and waiting for me there on my personal page was not only his group, but two or three people from graduate school who had been looking for me and requested to be “friends”. I thought it was a little spooky but, okay, it’s the brave new world of social interaction right?

Facebook has only continued to amaze me, and, at the same time, make me a little uncomfortable. As I fleshed out my profile suddenly people were finding me from work, collage, my first grad school, my second grad school, and high school and asking to be “friends”. These are people I have not had ANY contact with of ANY kind since the day we graduated; people that I never would have hand contact with again were it not for Facebook.

Then I noticed that down in the lower right hand corner of my Facebook page it has “suggestions” of people who you might know, and, incredibly I knew a lot of them and wanted to be in contact with them. So I went on obliviously for a couple of weeks accepting any friendship invitation I received even if I did not recognize them because, if they knew me, I could probably eventually figure out who they were.

Then I received an invitation from one person that I recognized from somewhere but did not recognize their name. I said yes to the invitation and then went on my Facebooking way. Then it occurred to me, what if this person who I recognize but don’t recognize is a former inmate? What if this person was on my caseload at the jail? Not only would it be a violation of social work ethics for me to converse with them on Facebook, it would also be the kind of thing that could get me into trouble at work. Luckily the person ended up being friend from high school, but now I am much more careful about accepting any friendship invitation willy-nilly.

Then the paranoia really started in. It is very apparent from my Facebook page that I am a blue blooded liberal through and through. There is also a link there to this blog which obviously leans strongly to Port. I knew people from work, and people from both sides of my family and my wife’s family, all of them mostly staunchly right-wing, had started to find my Facebook page and, I assume, my blog. I NEVER talk politics here at work or with extended family. I don’t want to get a reputation for being a rabid liberal, even if I am, because I don’t think it’s useful in the context I function in at work. It could also potentially make relationships with some of the staff difficult if they judge me purely on my political leanings, which they do. I also don’t discuss politics with my extended family because… well, what’s the point? They are my family and I don’t want to fight with them the couple days a year I spend with them.

I debated about toning down my Facebook page and removing the link to the blog. Ultimately, though, I figured I’m not making any personal attacks, not saying much specific about work, not saying anything beyond the pale, and really, not so politically rabid after all. I’m just a liberal, and I’m proud of my beliefs. It’s just the Carl Rove, right wing propaganda machine that has made liberal a dirty word.

After I put that bit of worry to bed, the next day I was driving my daughter to school and heard a radio news report about people stealing other people’s identity’s based on the amount of personal information available on Facebook. I drove straight home and hid my birth date on my Facebook account and made some other minor changes that would make it difficult for a person to steal my identity.

So like all technology, Facebook is a blessing and a curse. I am in touch with friends I have not heard from in years but it also has its risks. As my sister recently warned me, anything you put on the internet is there forever. This means that I need to be cautious about what I say and do on the internet. Shouldn’t everyone though? Should we ever say or do something in one context that would be totally taboo in another context? It’s just like your mother told you, “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” I would say, don’t do anything you would be embarrassed by or deeply regret at some point in the future. I haven’t.

Is There a Real Conservative in the House?

2008-09-24T15:20:00.002-06:00

I recently heard a sound bite of Sarah Palin calling Barack Obama “Just another tax and spend Democrat.” I had to laugh because Palin’s claim is based on nothing. It has no factual basis. It’s just the standard dog and pony conservatives drag out when ever they talk about their Democratic opponents. It doesn’t matter or not if it’s true or even relevant to the conversation, it only matters that Plin said it, and now it’s out there to be picked up and repeated again, and again, in the media. Palin’s remarks, and the recent meltdown of the financial markets, though, got me thinking about what it supposedly means to be a conservative. The conservatives say the same things over and over, but they are hardly ever challenged on the validity of their statements.

The small government, fiscal conservative, does not exist and may never have existed. They have been replaced by the social conservative, neo-con. Yet conservatives continue with their same old saw about the Democrats raising taxes, enlarging the government, and spending money. Like Palin’s remarks, though, what they say, and what really is, are completely different things.

Conservatives talk constantly about smaller government, but that’s not what we have seen in the last eight years from them by any measure. Under the current administration and their allies in Congress, the US Government has exploded. The number of new, bloated, government bureaucracies, departments, agencies, and programs, has grown exponentially. We’ve also seen the Clinton surplus evaporate over night to be replaced by the largest deficit in US history. Is this fiscally conservative?

Conservatives talk about keeping the government out of our lives, yet under the current administration the governments ability to interfere in the daily lives of it’s criticizes is unprecedented. The Constitution, always held up as the conservative standard, has had its protections steadily eroded under this administration in the name of national security. In addition, the social conservative agenda has shone willingness for our government to interfere in its citizens most personal and intimate matters.

Conservatives deride nation building and intervention in other countries’ affairs, yet, under this administration, we have waged war on Iraq under dubious circumstances, and are now engaged there in nation building on a scale not seen since the end of the Second World War.

Conservatives love to talk about deregulation and letting the “Invisible Hand” work its magic in the market. When greed and poor insight, leads to the collapse of those markets, as we have recently seen, however, the conservatives are not so willing to be ruled by the “Invisible Hand.” They run to the government they hate so much with their hands out and the conservatives in government are only too willing to oblige, this time to the tune of 700 billion dollars. 700 billion dollars!!!

It is time for conservatives to own up to the mess that their Executive has created. Its time for them to be true to their “conservative ideals” or to denounce them and embrace the “neo-con ideals” that have ruled their party since the Republican revolution. It’s time for this campaign to be about ideas and not a series of pre-packaged sound bites. Don’t count on it though. From what we have seen so far, the same dog and pony are trotting into the ring.

The Wold is Flat

2008-09-13T18:46:00.002-06:00

Thomas L. Friedman wrote a recent book called The World is Flat in which he posits that globalization has, in many ways, flattened the playing field in the global economy. While it may be true for multinational corporations I cant see that it is true for the substance farmer in Africa or the street merchant in Mexico City. In fact, for the vast majority of the world’s poor I would say that globalization has had the opposite effect by making the poor poorer and the rich richer. Much, much, richer.

But it’s not Mr. Friedman’s theory, but the title of his book that I am interested in. The World is Flat. I’ve come to realize this week that, in many ways, my world is flat. Not in the economic sense Mr. Friedman writes about but on a spiritual and political level.

I became a Social Worker several years ago, after spending my entire educational and professional career up to that point in theatre, because of the social injustices I saw in the world all around me, and because I wanted to do more than write about them in my plays. I wanted to get my hands in the mud, and I definitely have.

The reckless excesses, corruption, and general buffoonery of the current administration caught me on fire politically. I was involved in politics, writing letters, attending the Democratic convention in 2000, taking part in huge peaceful marches with my infant daughter riding on my back.

Lately, I just don’t feel on the same level. I still get angry at injustice. I still have the desire to make things better. I get up every day and confront it in some way or another at my job. The fire has gone out of it though to some extent.

November’s election will either keep America on the path to radical conservatism with everything that it brings for the poor, middle-class, environment, and global community, or towards hope, unity, and constructive global citizenship.

Still, I can’t muster the energy to do anything. I receive 20 e-mails a day asking me to help in one way or another with the Obama campaign. I just can’t do it beyond a token monetary contribution. I can’t even put an Obama sign in my yard or wear a pin because I don’t want to have to explain my political beliefs to those who might confront me. I just don’t have it in me to confront the ugliness of the conservative campaign on the phone, on the street, or in any other way.

I can’t even listen to the news about the campaign. I have a sense that there is nothing that I can do to stop what almost seems inevitable. I have a sense of pessimism I have not experienced before. I’ve flattened out. I am a spectator in a historic moment. I’m in internal exile.

I wonder if the same thing would have happened to me had I been around in the 50’s and 60’s during the civil rights movement and the resistance to the Viet Nam war. Those were equally perilous times and the outcome was, I assume, equally unknown. How did average people find the strength to resist being overwhelmed by pessimism?

Luckily I still have one area of my life that gets the fire roaring. When I see my son, when I play with my daughter, when I spend time with my wife I am sometimes filled with such love hope and affection. I’ll do anything for them. I want them to be happy. That’s how it should be I suppose, and I suppose that means I’m still alive on the most important level.

Hope

2008-09-05T11:43:00.003-06:00

Last week I listened to Barack Obama’s speech accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States. Before 80,000 people Obama gave a speech that inspired, a speech that called for unity, a speech that called for change. I was inspired. I dared to let a little flame ignite hoping that the hateful and divisive politics of the last eight years might be coming to an end.

The next day I went to the websites of several mainstream media outlets to read what had been written about the speech. While what was written in the articles was generally positive, I found that more than half of the online comments responding to the articles were venomous attacks, not just on the content of Obama’s speech, but on Obama himself, his wife, and his family, all left, of course, anonymously. I was stunned that such a positive message could be twisted into something so ugly.

This week the Republicans had their convention. I’ve listened to many of the speeches and found the general tone of the two conventions to be different. While the Democrats directly challenged the failed policies of the current administration drew distinctions between Obama and McCain, the message was largely positive and upbeat. In contrast, many of the speeches I have heard coming from St. Paul have been sarcastic, divisive, and negative.

I found this to be particularly true of McCain’s Vice-presidential running mate Palin’s speech. She used her first platform on the national stage to ridicule Obama’s call for energy independence and mock Obama’s experience as a community organizer implying that he had no real responsibilities and was therefore not fit to be Commander in Chief. A co-worker commented that Palin sounded like a sarcastic cheer leader at a pep rally.

I have talked many times in this blog about the need for America to unify. I don’t pretend that Democrats don’t engage in some of the same name calling and smears that the Republicans have. I do however think that the real change agent in this election is Barack Obama. Although he is running for President as a Democrat, I believe that, if elected, he will work to unify a country that has become deeply divided as a result of Carl Rove’s political strategy for the Republican Party.

I admit that I am a partisan, and have become more so as a result of the current administration and how the neo-con controlled congress governed. I believe the in Democratic values of inclusion and empowerment for all people. Although I am not a conservative, I don’t believe that conservatives are bad people or un-American. I also don’t believe that Democratic power should go unchecked by a conservative counterweight. There are real differences between conservatives and liberals and that’s okay. We can disagree without hating or dehumanizing each other. McCain is a good man and I respect him although I don’t agree with him. Obama, however, represents the best hope for the end of the politics of exclusion and division in this country.

It may already be too late, though. It may be the destiny of this country to continue to fracture along political and religious lines and to balkanize. I hope not. We will know in November.

CONVENTION II

2008-08-28T15:35:00.002-06:00

My wife and I were present at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in 2000. A colleague from my wife’s days at the American Embassy in Mexico was working for the Secretary of the Democratic National Committee and was able to get both of us jobs as volunteers.

It was like attending a four day adrenalin fueled rock concert. The Staples Center was filled to the rafters with delegates, reporters, political luminaries, and celebrities. Each evening we listened to inspiring speeches that made us not only feel proud to be Democrats, but to fell proud to be Americans. Each night we attended parties in some of Los Angeles’s most famous night clubs.

Both my wife and I worked the convention from the floor, running errands for the Secretary and shuttling messages from the podium to the delegates. I was even able to act as Whip for the Secretary during the nomination roll call to Al Gore’s home state of Tennessee.

There was such a feeling of optimism going into the 2000 election. Although the Clinton administration had been battered by the Monica Lewinski scandal, under Clinton the American economy had undergone its largest expansion since World War II, we had the largest surplus in American history, and Clinton had taken the wind out of the sails of major Republican planks by supporting things like welfare reform. We also felt that there was no way the bumbling, silver-spoon son of an ex-president could possibly stand a chance against the articulate Gore.

I remember the disappointment I felt as Gore conceded the election to Bush after the Supreme Court stopped the recount in Florida. I thought, however, that like his father’s administration, I could tolerate another Bush administration, even if I did not agree with all of its policies.

How wrong I was. The unmitigated disaster of the four years that followed showed Bush not to be the uniter he promised to be, but one of the most divisive figures in recent history. Instead of uniting the nation and the world after the events of 9/11, the Bush administration used this moment in history, as important as Pearl Harbor, to divide Americans from one another and to fracture relationships with our closest international allies. There was no way I felt he could be re-elected after the level of incompetence he had displayed.

Wrong again. When Bush was actually elected for his second term I withdrew. I went on a three-month news fast where I did not see or listen to one news cast or read one article. Since that time I have been much less politically active. I’ve been cynical about the political process. I’ve been sad that the country I love and grew up in seemed to be so deeply divided because our leaders chose to exploit divisions to consolidate power instead of trying to unite in a common cause.

Now, eight years after those thrilling nights in Los Angeles, I live in another convention city. This time, though, I have been reluctant to participate on any level. I haven’t even gone down town to look around. I’m not sure I believe in the process any more. I’m tired of the negativity. I’m tired of the Republicans treating the Democrats as if they are not really Americans. I’m tired of the Democrats portraying all Republicans as heartless elitists. I’m not even sure if the America that existed before 9/11 exists any more. The way things are may be the way things will be.

I have, however, listened on the sly to some of the speeches coming from the convention. I’ve been inspired by what I have heard from both Clintons, Biden, Kennedy and others. Obama is such an inspiring and uniting figure. There is part of me that wants to believe that a man like Obama can be elected. I’m afraid to hope though.

Desolation

2008-08-21T12:29:00.004-06:00

I had barely gotten into my office yesterday morning after going through my usual panicked morning routine and dropping off my daughter at school, when the phone rang. It was a Deputy up in Max asking me to come and do a court notification. This means that an inmate has just received a lengthy prison sentence of ten or more years and the courts have “notified” the jail so that a counselor can speak with them immediately after their return.

Normally when I do these court notifications the inmates are just angry and the last thing they want to do is talk to a stranger about how they feel. This time though, the inmate was just a kid, 18 years old, who had been given a 40 year prison sentence. He was scared, bewildered, raw, and seemed to be shrinking away before my eyes. It was one of the more hopeless situations that I have ever faced as a social worker.

Without going into detail, the crime he had committed had been done while he was high on meth. It was a serious crime involving the threat of violence but there were no fatalities and no injuries. This kid had taken a deal for a 5 – 65 year sentence but his attorney had assured him he was likely to do something like 10 – 15 years at most. The Judge, however, had other ideas and gave him 40 years. Because he had taken a deal he can’t appeal, and can only hope that he will have his sentence reconsidered at some point in the future.

What could I say? All of my usual interventions were useless. I couldn’t say it would be alright, because it won’t be, not really. I couldn’t say he will be okay because prison is not a safe place, especially for someone as young and naive as he was. I couldn’t say it was a mountain to be gotten over, because behind this immediate mountain is another and another and another streching into his late fifties. I couldn’t even use his faith as a source of comfort because it was so closely tied to mistreatment he had experienced as a child. All I could say was that life would go on, and that his feelings would not be so intense forever.

As I walked back to my office I felt such an overwhelming feeling of sadness that I wondered for a moment if I would cry. At one point in my career I dealt with the illness and death of children in a hospital setting. As terrible as it sometimes was, there was always hope for recovery, and if there was no hope there was the release from suffering through death. I found that easier to deal with than the slow annihilation of life through a long prison sentence that I face once in a while now. What a waste of a life even if the prison sentence is warranted.

Of course there is the potential within every human to make something extraordinary out of something like this and I hope he will be one of those people. I hope he can find some father figure or mentor who will make the transition easier without taking advantage of him. I hope he can find his way to some sort of meaning.

I’m not soft on crime. I’ve written before that any society based on the rule of law has the right to separate out those individuals who are destructive and tear at the fabric of society. This kid had committed a serious crime and deserved some kind of sentence. I can’t see, though, that it serves society, and certainly not this kid, to go away for 40 years. There are murderers and rapists I’ve dealt with who have received lighter sentences. Suppose he makes it 40 years and gets out some day in the distant future. What will he be able to do? How will he possibly be able to be a contributing member of society? I feel tainted by the experience. It does not feel like justice. It feels like desolation.

Juno

2008-08-15T18:54:00.002-06:00

I recently saw the movie Juno, about a cute-as-a-button teen that has an unplanned pregnancy and her misadventures as she makes plans to give her child up for adoption. In the run up to the Academy Awards the critics could not praise the movie enough. To their credit, Ellen Paige, the actress playing the title role, is loveable and edgy and surrounded by a great supporting cast including the always great Michael Crea from Arrested Development playing the hapless father of the baby.

I liked the movie and laughed all the way through it. What more can you really expect from a move, right? If a movie does not entertain on some level, what’s the point? Juno, though, is one of those movies you see and really like, but as time passes the story sort of slides off you and after a while you feel you’ve been duped. I had the same experience with the movie Titanic. It seemed so monumental and ground breaking when I saw it, but now, eleven years out, I think most agree that the movie is nothing more than a really expensive and stupid pot-boiler. In the same way, I can’t see Juno becoming a movie classic or even a teen classic. There just isn’t enough there there.

The movie’s biggest mistake is soft-peddling the whole issue of teen pregnancy. The movie doesn’t even begin to accurately portray the life-altering havoc that teen pregnancy causes, even if, as Juno does in the movie, the mother gives the baby up for adoption. Instead, Juno treats the whole thing as a kind of joke or minor mishap like getting a D in home economics. From the first moment when she buys three pregnancy tests from a convenience store, to the ultra sound where her mother yells at the technician, to arranging for the adoption, Juno never acts as if anything particularly important or spectacular is happening. Instead the writers fill her mouth with annoying, Gilmore Girls type, one line zingers.

Since Juno herself seemed to be the writer’s idea of what a pregnant teen should be, I found myself drawn more to the more finely drawn supporting characters. Jennifer Garner gives a superb performance as the adoptive mother, longing for a child, and fighting the juvenile, destructive, passive-resistance of her husband every step of the way. Michael Crea, as mentioned before, is completely believable as the befuddled and completely smitten father of Juno’s baby.

I realize that Juno is a comedy and is not meant to be heavy drama, but comedy can, and has, dealt with the heaviest situations without turning the situation itself into a joke. Look at the movie Life is Beautiful. Would anyone have ever believed that a Nazi concentration camp could be the setting for such a great comedy? It’s for this reason I think Juno is likely to have a limited shelf life since the movie is essentially a full-budged situation comedy. The film makers chose to go with cute and quirky instead of portraying teen pregnancy as the permanently life altering situation that it is.

A recommitment

2008-08-08T12:37:00.004-06:00

Since starting to regularly blog again at the begging of this year, I have tried to make the general theme of this blog understanding, peace, and cohesion. It’s not easy to do. Our culture and language are driven by conflict and division. Turn on the television at any given time and you will find reality TV, where some of society’s nastiest people are pitted against each other in carefully choreographed competitions designed to bring out the worst in the contestants, all while wearing as few clothes as the FCC will permit. The characters in the most popular sitcoms are sarcastic and malicious even to those who are supposedly their “friends.” Open any paper and article after article use a model of conflict as their basis even when reporting on the mundane or banal.

We allow our selves to live in environments of constant conflict. It’s always “us and them” and never simply just “us”. We are divided by race, religion, politics, geography, socioeconomic status, and sex.

I’m guilty of this too. I work in an environment with clearly drawn lines of “us and them” depending on which side of the cell door they stand on and whether or not they have a star pinned to their shirt. The tendency to think in generality and make assumptions about people starts to sink into your bones. Although I frequently check my thoughts when I judge others harshly, I can still get in a frame of mind where I view those who are not like me as “others”. This of course makes any kind of dialogue nearly impossible.

So I’m recommitting. I’m going to try to give others the benefit of the doubt even if they don’t afford me the same. I will try to understand the other person’s point of view, even if I don’t agree with it. I will try to find the humanity in all people.

This doesn’t mean that I have to turn a blind eye to ideas that I feel are wrong or soft peddle my reaction when I encounter injustice. It just means that I won’t dehumanize those who hold those ideas or perpetrate injustice.

Putting My Finger in the Dike

2008-08-01T08:09:00.002-06:00

When I was in graduate school the second time around, I suddenly found myself overwhelmed. My MFA program had been nearly effortless. It was a lot of work, but writing came naturally to me and, let’s face it, it was theater, so it was all imagination and living inside my head. Social work was different. Now I was outside my head and firmly rooted in results based practice. I was writing the same amount, if not more, but this writing was research oriented and analytical. What made this program so much more difficult, though, was because it dealt with reality. Not just reality, but the worst aspects of the human condition. Coming from theater I was used to drama, conflict, and suffering, but what I was witnessing now was the real thing. I often became overwhelmed by the level of suffering in the world. I was forced out of my head into the world.

Although I love being a social worker, I still experience these moments of profound pessimism. I have had to train myself to shut it out. To be effective, I can’t look at the big picture. Otherwise I will freeze and I won’t be any help to my clients or myself. Instead, I try to focus on the here and now, on the person sitting in front of me, on the issue that is immediately at hand. I try not to focus on the larger societal issues that may have landed my clients in their current positions because in reality, there is nothing I can do about it as one person.

It’s a delicate balance. At times I shut out the suffering too much. Last week I took some of my family through the jail on a tour. When I asked my Mother and Sister what they thought, they said that it was interesting, but that it was a deeply depressing place. It is. I work in a place of suffering and dysfunction. I realized that I have shut it out to the point it has become commonplace. If it weren’t so, I would be useless to the inmates. If I am to offer them anything, I can’t focus on suffering. I have to focus on the small ways I can help at this moment.

I know there are Social Workers who are able to see the big picture, the macro practice social workers. They are the community organizers, the people who lobby government for change, and the people who start national movements. I prefer the micro practice. I like to look the people in the face. I know that it is likely I will not effect any change on society at large. I could work here at the jail for 30 years and the day I retired there would still be people pouring in to the jail. I’m just one person. I don’t have any particularly special powers or training, but I can be with people at the crossroads in their life.

I’m writing this because I am in one of my periods of pessimism; I’m giving myself a pep talk. I believe in what I do. Even if I am just sticking my finger in the dike or emptying the ocean with a dropper, to me it’s still worth it. If not me, who?

My Grandmother's Journal

2008-07-24T18:14:00.003-06:00

My Grandmother kept a journal all of her life. One of the clear images I have of my Grandma is her sitting in her chair in the living room of her house scratching away in her journal. The result is scores of volumes in her difficult but familiar handwriting, chronicling her everyday life.

Recently, my sisters have been transcribing these journals onto the computer so that they would be available to the whole extended family. When I asked one of my sisters if they were interesting, she said that they were interesting because they had been written by our Grandmother, but they did not offer much insight into her internal life. They were mostly a kind of travel log of her daily activities; taking care of family, going to church, doing service, working around the house, visiting friends. My sister said that she did not comment on people and events in her journals or offer many opinions about them as she did in conversation. My sister can recall my Grandmother talking passionately about events mentioned in her journal but this emotion did not get translated into her written account for some reason.

I was surprised to hear my Grandmother's journals were not more detailed because she was a good writer. Her written account, in her personal history, of the flu epidemic of 1918, in which two of her brothers died, was the basis of one of my plays that made up my graduate thesis. That account was vivid and eloquent. It painted a very bleak picture of the desperation, fear, and heartache experienced by her family during that event.

My sisters felt that my Grandma had censored herself because she knew her journals, more than almost any other physical thing, would survive her. She likely did not want to say anything that would make her appear to be judgmental, petty, or unhappy. She definitely would not have wanted to record anything that would embarrass or hurt those she loved.

It’s a dilemma I have faced in my own journals. How much is too much? Are there things which should not be recorded or written down? I’ve kept a journal since I was 13. I’ve gone through fazes were I felt that I was writing to the generations of my family that will come after me. These journals are downright silly and can be condescending. Then I went through a period where I wrote only for myself and did not censor myself at all. These too are a worry to me because I wonder if they may hurt those I love or, because they were written in college, paint a debouched picture of me.

Lately I hardly write at all. I seem to lack the vocabulary to adequately express my inner life. I am also old enough now to really understand that someday I will be dead and someone will read them. I would hate to hurt anyone I love with anything that I have written, partially my wife and children, but also my parents, siblings and friends.

What do journal writers owe the living? For that matter, what do journal writers owe the dead? Does anything go in a personal journal? The writer Jane Austen instructed her sister to burn all of her correspondence and journals after her death. I’m sure that she did so because she did not want her words to harm or embarrass those she loved. I assume she also wanted her legacy to be built upon her creative work and not what she may have said in a letter to a friend or family member. What a loss, though. The ability to really know this wonderful writer as a person from her own hand is gone forever.

I want my journal to be the tool for creativity and self exploration that it once was. So I’m starting to write again more often. I’m trying to write more about my thoughts and feelings surrounding events and not just simply what is going on. I often feel angry. I often feel unhappy. I can promise not to write something I know to be untrue. I can promise not to be vindictive, but I suppose there is always the chance that something I write may surprise someone I care about or give an inaccurate impression about who I am. That may just be the risk of keeping a journal.

The Culture of Misinformation

2008-07-17T18:11:00.002-06:00

A friend of mine has recently been engaged in a heated e-mail exchange with his father about Barack Obama. The exchange started with one of those ubiquitous forwarded e-mails full of misleading or false information with no source. This one claimed that the Obama’s cared more about their African-American race than they did about being American. The only proof offered in the e-mail was that Barack Obama had been a community organizer in largely minority neighborhoods in Chicago, and that Michelle Obama wrote her undergraduate senior thesis on issues surrounding the African-American experience.

My friend responded to his father by pointing out the illogical arguments made by the forwarded message. His father’s reply was immediate and vitriolic referring to Obama as “the Muslim” and stating that he needed to get Michelle Obama under control because she was not going to be President even if Barack is elected.

I was surprised that anyone would write such an ugly response to anyone, let alone a family member. The response is typical, though, of what political dialogue in this country amounts to these days. When Barack Obama locked up the Democratic nomination, I initially felt some relief because I believed the ultra-conservatives would be more reluctant to attack an African-American man and run the risk of being preceded as racists, than they would Clinton, a woman, who they already had already demonstrated a no-holds-barred approach to. I was wrong. The far right has already shown they will not hesitate to raise the specter of race.

It seems that in the culture fostered by the present Administration, if someone says something, it must be true. Although spreading misinformation about your political enemies is not new, the speed and the anonymity of the internet means that a lie can be repeated millions of times, with no accountability, before the subject of the lie has time to respond.

Obama is un-American. Obama is a Muslim. Obama won’t say the pledge of allegiance. All of these recent statements are patently false and easily refuted with the facts, but this does not stop them from causing him damage. The campaign of misinformation waged by the extreme right seeks to make Obama an “Other” an outsider. They say that he is not one of us, that he can not be trusted. We as a society willingly, and sometimes eagerly, become consumers of the lies, instead of engaging our minds in a dialogue about Obama’s proposed policies and how they contrast to McCain’s.

The ugliness of the attacks against Obama is indicative of something deeper that has taken place in American society. Purveyors of anger and misinformation like Rush Limbaugh make their millions by telling their listeners that it’s not enough just to disagree with those with differing views, they have to dehumanize and hate them too. Scorched earth politics has become the norm. At the end of the Bush Administration we are more divided than perhaps we have ever been. It’s not healthy, and it’s not good for the general welfare of the Union.

I still believe there is reason for hope. The Obama candidacy, and to some extent even the choice of the comparatively independent McCain by the conservatives, shows that people are longing for something different than what they have gotten from Bush and his ilk over the past eight years. Both Obama and McCain are thoughtful leaders who are driven by more than just rhetoric. I can only hope that the poisonous era of the neo-con’s is over, and Americans are ready to unify and work towards taking American society and the world into a more peaceful 21st century.

Work Rules

2008-07-09T12:36:00.002-06:00

I knew that if I let my weekly postings slip here, that I ran the risk of falling off the Blogging wagon. There has been plenty to write about. The Supreme Court ruled that maybe we shouldn’t throw away Habeas Corpus; I’m shocked they got it right. The Supreme Court interpreted the 2nd amendment in a way that goes contrary to something like 79 years of case law; no suprise there.

I’m still not feeling much like writing though. I’m having one of my occasional bouts of cynicism that started a few weeks ago when I attended some training for work and had a very negative experience with a member of the command staff. I suppose I’ll write about it sometime but not today.

So… in order to post today I’m simply going to post rules I live by as a counselor in a county jail.

Never turn your back on an inmate

Always walk behind an inmate

Always place yourself between the inmate and the door.

Never allow yourself to be locked in a room or cell with an inmate.

Don’t argue with Deputies, it wastes time and annoys the Deputy.

Don’t argue with inmates, it wastes time and annoys the inmate.

Always remember the person sitting across from you is a human being no matter what they have done.

If you are angry, think before you speak even if it means going away and coming back later.

Never make a decision about an inmate based on anger.

Don’t make a decision about an inmate based on fear.

Don’t let covering your ass interfere with doing your job right.

Always be direct and honest but be diplomatic.

Never say anything that would embarrass or humiliate an inmate in the presence of a Deputy or another inmate.

Never contradict a Deputy in the presence of an inmate or in the presence of their commanding Sgt.

In general, say yes, unless of course it violates policy or common sense. It will make the inmate easier to manage.

If the inmate perceives it to be a crisis, it’s a crisis.

Remember, I can go home at night, the inmate can’t.

Shut up and listen.

Meeting Evil With Justice

2008-06-06T18:43:00.002-06:00

Yesterday, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11th attacks, and four other co-defendants, were arraigned before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. You would have a hard time finding a more unsympathetic defendant than Shaikh Mohammed. He is the very definition of a radical Muslim, extremist. When told by the Judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, that he could face the death penalty if found guilty, he reportedly stated that he wanted the death penalty so that he could become a martyr. Shaikh Mohammed is, to me, the embodiment of man’s inhumanity to man. He is a sadist who has twisted religious belief in order to murder and maim innocent people.

As repulsive as Shaikh Mohammed is, I am troubled by his detention at Guantanamo Bay, and the tribunal by which he will be tried. The Bush Administration set up the prison at Guantanamo Bay so that the people held there would be outside the authority of US Federal Law. They employed a phalanx of attorneys who made convoluted arguments that the detainees did not have a right to basic legal rights such as due process and habeas corpus, and were not covered by the Geneva Convention.

In his hearing yesterday, Shaikh Mohammed stated that he felt the court had only been created in order to find him guilty, and that the trial would be a sham. Sadly, he may be right. Everyone from the defendant’s attorneys and the prosecuting attorneys, to the Judge, to the jurors who will eventually hear the case, will be US military officers; hardly what I would call an impartial court. Shaikh Mohammed’s civilian attorneys were not permitted to participate in the hearing and will not be allowed to take part in the trial. Anyone who has dared to voice concerns over the legal proceedings at Guantanamo have been called naïve, and have been the subject of the Administration’s time worn tactic of questioning their patriotism and accusing them of defending terrorists.

I understand that some of the world’s most evil men are likely within the walls of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. I also understand the instinct to desperately want the men responsible for the 9/11 attacks to face justice. The Bush Administration’s creation of the prison at Guantanamo bay, and their refusal to allow US law apply to the men housed there, though, shows that this Administration has no faith in the American justice system. In fact, it could be argued that this Administration views it with deep contempt. As much as they talk about their love for this country and their desire to protect it, they do not believe that our laws are capable of delivering justice to these men. They are willing to turn their back on core American values.

Do we really want to sacrifice the closest held ideals of our democracy in order to guarantee punishment no matter what the men at Guantanamo Bay might have done? If these men are ultimately found guilty after an unfair trial, will justice really have been served for the thousands who died on 9/11? For over 200 years this country has succeeded because of our ideals and because of the rule of law. The founding fathers believed that all human beings have inalienable rights. This even includes those who have inflicted great evil on humanity. If 9/11 was an attack on civilization, on democracy, and on the rule of law, then how does it serve us to act uncivil, undemocratic, and change our laws in reaction to that attack?

The Bush Administration should allow these men to face justice in the Federal American Justice system. These men should be shown that their great evil will be met with even handed justice. This, more than anything else, would show the world that America is a just society governed by the rule of law and that even the most depraved acts will not cause us to waiver.

Evolution and Religion (Can't we all just get along?)

2008-05-29T18:06:00.003-06:00

Lately, I’ve been watching postings on YouTube on evolution and conflict between proponents of a young earth (approximately six thousand years), Intelligent Design, and evolutionary purists. I watched Growing Pains’ former child star Kirk Cameron smugly explaining to Bill O’Reilly why the theory of evolution is wrong by displaying a picture of an animal that is half alligator half duck and asking in effect “if evolution exists, why don’t we have this animal?” I also watched a scholarly old gentleman tell the students of the evangelical Liberty University that they should go to a “proper” university because the museum on their campus had a display of fossils that they claimed were only six-thousand years old. Finally I watched a long posting by a regular video blogger who calls himself RabidApe who gave an excellent, scientifically based, explanation of evolution, one of the best non commercial postings I have ever seen on YouTube. He ended this posting, however, by calling the bible “a fairy tail.”

Although I am myself a firm believer in evolution, I am irritated by shrill pundits on both sides of the issue. I am irritated by flat-earth evangelicals who still deny the earth is billions of years old and that the theory of evolution is somehow evil. They do this despite hundreds of years of hard scientific evidence and can only point to a few versus in a book written thousands of years ago to support their own argument. I dated a girl briefly in high school whose explanation of the fossil record was that Satan put them there to deceive us.

I’m also irritated by evolutionists who insist that a higher power had no hand in the creation of the universe and that the scientific record proves it. When I was in the midst of my own evangelical fervor in the early 90s, I constantly fought with an atheist friend about weather or not God existed. He simply said “he doesn’t. End of story.”

To me the questions of evolution and creation are not mutually exclusive. While it is preposterous to take the account of creation in the Bible literally, it is also preposterous to dismiss the possibility that some higher power had a hand in creating the universe. For evangelicals to insist the universe could only come into existence in exactly the way detailed in the Bible, means that they suppose they know and understand the mind of God, something that is, by definition, unknowable. The evolutionists in turn who insist that science has somehow made religion obsolete again make an assumption about something they have no way of proving or disproving. It is pointless and divisive to do so.

On this question, I am glad to say my own sect got it right. One of the few times I agree with them. About ten or fifteen years ago when this issue really started to become a major part of the culture wars, they made an official statement saying that, as believers they had no idea how God operated or how he created the universe, and that all we did know was that our mind was not God’s mind. In essence they left to science what science can explain without diminishing the possible role of God in the natural world.

The divide between science and religion is sad and unnecessary. It came about as a direct result of the Old Catholic church in the time of Galileo. Scientists separated religion and science so that they wouldn’t be separated from their heads. Now, it is a radical faction of evangelical Protestants with their inflexible dogma that are doing the same thing by insisting on a completely literal interpretation of the Bible and dismissing anyone with a viewpoint that differs from their own. Science has removed itself so far from religious belief that anyone who says there may be the hand of a higher power at work in the natural world is scoffed at.

The reality is this, and remember I come to the question from a solidly agnostic point of view, science will never prove or disprove the existence of God or his possible hand in the creation of the universe. Religion can not legitimately dismiss scientific proofs simply because they may appear to contradict what is written in the Bible. These are the two separate spheres of science and religion. In the middle, however, is the unknown, and the unknown, in this case, is the common ground between people of faith and atheists of agnostics. It’s the place where the believer and the non-believer can look at the double helix of DNA and say “that is amazing.” This is the place where science and religion can come together and say “you know, we just don’t know….” And that’s okay.

NOTE: You can see the RabidApe video post by clicking on the title of this entry

Sit Down and Talk

2008-05-21T13:32:00.002-06:00

I recently listened to an interview with Padrig O’Malley and Mac Maharah on NPR’s Fresh Air. O’Malley was instrumental in brokering the peace in Northern Ireland while Maharah played a key role in ending apartheid in South Africa, even spending time in prison with Nelson Mandella on Robin Island. Last year, O’Malley and Maharah invited the warring factions in Iraq to Helsinki for a preliminary round of talks aimed at brokering a lasting peace and suspending the sectarian killing that has gone on there since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Regime.

The interview was inspiring. It made me remember that there is indeed another way to settle differences without resorting to violence or cowboy diplomacy. O’Malley related in the interview that he had written down all of the needs, desires, and grievances of the different factions and then made it clear that no group’s needs would take precedence over another. The attendees were amazed. No one had ever approached them in this way before.

Of course, O’Mally and Maharah have not as yet brokered a lasting peace. I am not naive enough to believe that Iraq’s secular conflict can be solved in one round of talks. It is apparent from the interview, though, that it is possible to have even the most bitter of enemies sit down at the bargaining table and work towards peace. Each group, however, must agree to sit at the table without making demands before negotiations can start. It is also important that any negotiations must take place in a neutral location and be facilitated by a neutral party. It’s an approach that seems to have been almost completely forgotten in the current climate.

President Bush states he is committed to a Palestinian state co-existing with Israel but he refuses to meet with Hamas an organization that has popular support in the region and will always stand as an obstacle to peace unless they are invited to sit at the table. Both Bush and McCain have criticized Obama because he has stated that he would be willing to speak with Iran regarding their nuclear program and their continued interference in Iraq. The ultimate end of not speaking with them, though, will be a nuclear armed Iran and unending bloodshed in Iraq. Our government seems to have forgotten that you don’t have to agree with someone, or even like them, to talk with them. Even at the height of the Cold War America was talking to the Soviet Union. More than one armed conflict was avoided through diplomatic channels.

I remember in graduate school learning that in some Native American tribes, conflict within the tribe between different members would be handled through long and difficult negotiation ultimately resulting in consensus without one side or the other gaining the advantage. Consensus is not something Americans are very comfortable with. For the most part we believe that there must always be a winner and always a loser. Our entire political process is based on conflict and imposing one way or thought or action over another.

The Karl Rove era of politics has only deepened the perceived ideological divide between Americans. As we come to the end of the Bush Administration, it is imperative that the American Government and the American people change their attitude. Whoever our next President may be, he or she must work to heal the divide within our own country and re-establish our role not just as the preeminent military power in the world but also as the leading ethical and moral power in the world. To do this, we first have to be willing to sit down and talk.

A NOTE: I recommend Fresh Air to anyone who is interest in current events and people. The interviewer Terry Gross is one of the most skilled I have ever encountered. I have put a link to Fresh air on my link list. I’ve also linked to the Padrig O’Malley and Mac Maharah interview. Click on the title to this entry if you would like to hear it.

Disappointment

2008-05-15T10:26:00.001-06:00

I’ve had a lesson in bitter disappointment this week. The move from Los Angeles to Colorado has been a hard adjustment for me. So I was looking forward to the visit of a friend who lives in LA that I have known for 20 years. He told me he would be in Colorado “sometime in May” but gave me no date. He came mid-week and informed me he was here by voice mail. I left two voice mails and sent some text messages but heard nothing from him until Tuesday, five days after he arrived. He called to say he was borrowing a car to drive down to see me. He never called back and never showed up. Now he has presumably returned to Los Angeles.

This incident has got me thinking about the role disappointment has played in my life and in the life of every person. If I’m honest with myself, much of who I am is shaped by life’s disappointments. Not getting into the playwriting program in Iowa eventually led to my landing in Los Angeles where I spent 9 of the happiest years of my life. Realizing I would not have a job in academia in theater led me to Social Work were I have professional confidence and a sense of usefulness. The head of my denomination embracing Dick Cheny before a standing ovation of church members was the final fracture that allowed me to put personal distance between myself and the church of my birth so that I am no longer angry about some of the dogma within my religion.

In each of these cases the initial disappointment has been very hard to swallow. But I’ve come out the other side often with something valuable. I expect this latest disappointment will be much the same, or, over time, it will fade in importance.

Senator Obama vs. Reverend Wright

2008-05-10T15:22:00.002-06:00

I’ve been a little surprised by the traction the story about Senator Barak Obama and his former Pastor Jeremiah Wright has gained in the media. Reverend Wright made inflammatory comments about 9/11saying, “God damn America,” and implying that the attack was a result of America’s actions overseas. Senator Obama immediately denounced the comments as divisive but still called the man who married him and baptized his children a friend. He commented that he had never heard Reverend Wright make such comments when he was sitting in the congregation. Then, after the story had almost gone away, Reverend Wright made a series of public statements to the effect that Senator Obama was just saying what needed to say to get elected and that in his heart of hearts he supported Wright’s statements. This time, Senator Obama decisively and unequivocally broke with his former Pastor and said that Reverend Write did not represent his beliefs.

Despite Senator Obama’s immediate and unequivocal response to Reverend Wright’s comments, something that is rare in a politician, polls show that the incident has done real damage to Obama, and may have harmed his changes to prevail in the general election this fall.

What surprises me the most is that religion is, once again, becoming a major issue in the Presidential election. I wrote earlier this year about the unwarranted attacks against Mitt Romney because of his Mormon faith. Now, Senator Obama is being attacked for statements made by the Pastor of a church he no longer attends. In both cases the issue of religion is really a non-issue. Neither Governor Romney nor Senator Obamas’ faith has any true bearing on their ability to lead. Both have a reputation for being men of strong character. It seems, however, that to the President of the United States these days, we expect our candidates not only to be religious and Christian, but to be a certain type of Christian, mainly, evangelical. Anything outside of that “norm” appears to make a candidate suspect.

Even if Senator Obama still attended Reverend Wright’s church, are we to believe that he would accept anything said from the pulpit without question? If this were the type of man Senator Obama was would he have risen to his current level of achievement? In my own life, I have belonged to a denomination with a much more conservative ideology than my own personal belief. I frequently hear things from the pulpit I don’t necessarily believe. Am I obliged to chuck the religion of my birth because it doesn’t mesh in every way with my own belief?

What this all comes down to is whether or not we believe that religious belief is a private issue. Do we really want to require our leaders to publicly profess their religious beliefs at every opportunity? I never speak to others about my religious practice unless I am directly asked. I don’t particularly feel it is anyone’s business but my own. I would never force anyone into the position of being an apologist for their religion. The core beliefs that make people who they are should be manifested in their actions. I know this goes contrary to the evangelical mindset. Ultimately, though, the kind of religious belief that is useful and productive is personal, and should remain that way.

Texas' Dilemma and the FLDS Children

2008-05-02T18:28:00.005-06:00

I recently addressed a senior civic group about my career as a social worker. In the question and answer period following my remarks, I was asked what I thought about the seizure of over 140 children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), that had just taken place in Texas. As someone who worked in Family Preservation in Los Angeles County, I stated that we always did everything possible to keep children in their homes with their families, the feeling being that children are almost always better off with their parents as long as they were not in immediate danger. I went on to say that I did not see how the state of Texas could justify such heavy handed action, nor could I imagine that their Child Protective Services unit would be able to find adequate placements for so many children on such short notice. I predicted that the ultimate outcome of the action would be a black eye for the state and the government would be viewed as attacking religious freedom and parental rights.
I have some first hand knowledge of the FLDS church. As an undergrad in theater, the small liberal arts collage I attended was two hours drive from Colorado City and Hilldale, the twin towns on opposite sides of the Utah/Arizona border founded by the polygamist sect. Once a year, if the production was tame enough, women and children from the sect would arrive in vans and SUVs to attend the Saturday matinee of our musicals. The boys, dressed in jeans and button down shirts, behaved as any group of boys would on a field trip, playing and tussling as they waited to enter the theater. The women and girls, however, dressed in the long, plain, prairie dresses that have now become a symbol of the sect, kept their eyes down, and spoke in quiet and reserved voices. The whole group would be escorted by four or five sober faced adult male minders who shepherded them from place to place and limited interaction between sect members and “outsiders.”
At the time, my friends and I viewed the FLDS to be a benign, insular, religious community similar to the Amish or Orthodox Jews. The arrest, trial, and conviction of Warren Jeffs, their leader and “prophet,” though, revealed a much more sinister side to the FLDS church. Jeffs’ trial showed him to be a cult leader on the order of David Koresh or Jim Jones with almost total control over all aspects of the lives of his followers.
Even so, after the raid, I initially felt that consenting adults should be able to live and worship as they want so long as they are not abusing their children, or harming others. Although the FLDS is cult-like and strange, I could not believe that 140 plus children could all be in eminent danger. I thought about all the children who have been torn away from their totally sheltered lives and thrust into a world they view as evil. I thought about all the mothers whose children were taken from them with no way to work toward reunification. Having been on the receiving end of religious persecution, I also had some sympathy for what it must be like to be viewed with such hostility by the world at large.
As the story has unfolded, though, I have begun to wonder if perhaps the massive detention of the children was not warranted. From the bed in their temple meant for consummation of the “spiritual marriages” performed there, to the 15 or so minor girls who are pregnant or have already given birth, I’ve begun to believe that maybe all the children there were in eminent danger. The females in particular seemed to be at grave risk of sexual abuse at the hands of much older men.
It’s not a situation that can be easily remedied. The mantra of Child Protective Services should be “what is in the best interest of the child?” So what is the best interest in the case of the FLDS children? Definitely the minor girls who have been or are at risk of sexual abuse should be detained and perhaps permanently removed from their parents. The men who have sexually abused them should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and follow their leader Warren Jeffs to prison.
What should Texas do beyond this? The boys in the sect who are not expelled as surplus males will grow into men who will eventually prey on younger girls. The girls born into the sect will be indoctrinated into submitting to this abuse. Should the state put a permanent end to the abuse by permanently placing all the FLDS children in foster care or adoptive families, or should Child protective services only intervene when a child in eminent danger? Should our government be in the business of making this determination? Texas has opened a can of worms it is likely to be dealing with for years if not decades to come. It is also a situation that will have long range impact on Child Protective Services policy and practice in this country long after this particular situation has been resolved.

Should We Talk to our Enemies?

2008-04-24T09:53:00.002-06:00

President Jimmy Carter has been taking intense heat lately because of his meetings with the leaders of Hamas during his trip to the Middle East last week week. Israeli political leaders refused to meet with Carter and even went so far as to refuse security assistance to him during his visit as is customary for such a high level visit. Here in the United States right wing pundits and Israeli hard liners have accused Carter of negotiating with terrorists.

Last year, Carter attracted similar attacks when he stated in his most recent book that some of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians, and their actions in the occupied territories, were not in Israel’s best interest and did not move them towards a resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. As a result, some major donors to the Carter Center pulled their funding and broke their ties with the organization.

The criticism of Carter is, of course, unfounded. No one has done more for world peace in the last twenty-five years than President Carter and his organization. Say what you will about what kind of a President he may have been, but Carter has proven himself to be one of the most effective ex-presidents in recent history, overseeing elections, negotiating peace, and helping the poor and disenfranchised. Unlike many of his fellow ex-presidents, Bill Clinton included, who have spent their post presidential years on the lecture circuit and playing the links, Carter has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of others.

No one knows better than Carter the impact destruction and the depravity of terrorism. His own administration was scuttled by the hostage crisis at the American embassy in Iran. I am sure that President Carter is fully aware that Hamas is a terrorist organization that advocates for the destruction of Israel. He also realizes, however, that Hamas is a powerful political entity that controls the West Bank and no two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict can be reached without their cooperation.

Carter’s supposed offense is not that he negotiated with terrorists, but that he did not follow the Bush Doctrine of not speaking to our enemies, and using force before diplomacy. We can see where this has gotten us. Bush’s refusal to exhaust diplomatic options led to the quagmire in Iraq which is entering its sixth year with no end in site. Our refusal to talk to Iran has meant that we have no leverage against them in their pursuit of nuclear weapons and no way to negotiate their cooperation in Iraq. Although America has started to make tentative gestures towards them, South Korea, another nuclear proliferation threat, has become more insular and we have less knowledge of what they are up to than we did eight years ago. Finally, Hamas has taken control of the West Bank and continues to prevent any progress on a Middle East peace plan.

Carter knows that the first line of defense against our enemies is diplomacy and negotiation. Often, as in the Middle East, it is the only realistic solution. The conflict there will continue as a low level war forever until some kind of solution can be negotiated. As repugnant as it may be, Hamas must be a party to those negotiations if they are to be meaningful.

Carter accomplished what he set out to do by meeting with Hamas. He got them to tentatively agree to a two state solution to the conflict if the boarders with Israel returned to where they were prior to the Six Day War in 1967. This is a long way from a final resolution, but it shows that even an organization like Hamas is capable of negotiation. The Bush Administration and the administration that will follow would do well to take note. It is better to talk to your enemies than to ignore them.

Dear Gov. Dean, PLEASE DO SOMETHING!!!

2008-04-19T13:05:00.003-06:00

The following is a letter I sent to Gov. Howard Dean, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee after hearing about the latest Obama/Clinton foodfight. Again, I realize that writing letters does absolutely no good but it helps me to burn off some impotent rage. Perhaps it will give some lackey at the DNC a chuckle also.

Governor Dean,

My name is Pirate Aggro. I am a Social Worker living and working in Denver Colorado. I am writing to express my concern over the length and tone of the campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. America has watched for months as Senators Obama and Clinton and their campaigns have squabbled like children over trivial matters. In the mean time, Senator McCain is having all of his work done for him by his opponents without having to spend any capital, political or otherwise.

I can’t help feeling that this party infighting is hurting the viability of both candidates in the fall election, whoever it might be. I am sure the Republicans are not disappointed to see the two Democratic candidates tearing each other down and giving their candidate ample ammunition for the contest this fall.

Both Senators Clinton and Obama have said that the Democratic Party will get behind the eventual nominee when that time comes. This may be true, but the election this fall will not be won by party faithful but by swing voters and independents. If I, as a life long Democrat, am feeling disillusioned by our potential nominees a full six months before the election, what must undecided voters feel? As Obama and Clinton have been trading petty jabs and tripping over their words, McCain is looking more and more Presidential.

Please use any influence that you might have as Chairman of the DNC to prompt the Super-delegates to line up behind one candidate or the other and bring the nomination process to an end. If the Democrats are unable to win in this election following the corruption, excess, ineptitude of the Bush administration, and against one of the Administration’s most ardent proponents of the war in Iraq, then we might as well take down our tent and pack it up.

Sincerely,

Pirate Aggro

Denver Colorado

TIananmen Square, Tibet, and the Olympics

2008-04-10T10:29:00.003-06:00

In 1989 the world watched in horror as the Chinese government ruthlessly crushed pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, murdering hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful demonstrators. The figure of a lone Chinese student standing in defiance before a line of government tanks instantly became the iconic image of the incident. Like so many incidents of its kind, however, the world quickly forgot about what had taken place in Tiananmen Square and what had been lost there when they discovered that China was flush with cheap labor and manufacturing that could be exploited by the ever growing consumer economy in the West.

This week, the world has watched as the Olympic torch relay in England and France was repeatedly disrupted by activists protesting China’s violent suppression of protests in Tibet that were not dissimilar from the protests in Tiananmen Square. Here in the United States the torch was turned into a fugitive during its brief stay in San Francisco, furtively running, under heavy security, along secret routs and then shuttled off on a chartered Chinese jet to its next destination in Argentina.

The protester’s targeting of the Olympic torch itself may be misdirected, but their outrage towards the Chinese government is well warranted. The world seems to have forgotten that China is a totalitarian state with a human rights record that is spotty at best. The protesters are seeking to remind the world that what they will see in Beijing this summer is not the true face of China, but rather the Chinese government’s propaganda machine running at full tilt. Although every country that hosts the Olympics uses the games as a showcase for their nation, in a country where free speech is ruthlessly quashed, there can be no hope that the true nature of life and culture in China will be observed.

When the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1936 games to Germany they had no idea Hitler would take power two years later and turn the games into a Nazi propaganda show. This time though, when the IOC gave the games to China, they were essentially awarding them for their current totalitarian style of Government. They can not claim ignorance of China’s human rights record since Tiananmen Square stood as a bright example of what the Chinese government was capable of. They can not be surprised now by China’s actions in Tibet or the protests that are dogging the Olympic torch.

Hopefully, the Olympic Games will not be disrupted by further upheaval and the athletes who have prepared their whole lives to compete there will be allowed to do so in peace. The world needs to know, though, that China is not the benign emerging world power that they portray themselves to be. Perhaps the games will, at last, shine a bright light on Tiananmen Square.

Crime and Punishment Part II

2008-04-03T15:29:00.005-06:00

I’ve written quite a bit in this blog about religion and faith. Although I consider myself to be largely agnostic, I still find myself thinking and talking about these subjects all the time. In fact, since becoming a social worker, I talk more about religion and faith than I have since I was a missionary fifteen years ago. The difference is that back then my goal was evangelism, converting people to one set of beliefs, whereas now the goal is seeing if my clients have any belief that may help them deal with their situation whatever it may be.

This was the situation with the inmate I wrote about in my last entry. After we had talked for fifteen minutes about the usual things he asked me suddenly if I was “a believer.” Without getting into my own complicated personal beliefs, I told him that I attended church every week. I then asked him why he had asked me this question since knowing why someone is asking a question is often more useful than the question itself. He became very quiet and asked “do you think that Jesus still loves me?” Without hesitation I was able to tell him that I knew he did. He then asked me, “do you think he can forgive me?” Again, without hesitation I was able to tell him that I knew he could be forgiven. After all, I said, isn’t that the reason Christ died on the cross, to atone for our sins? I could see the effect these words had on him as relief washed over his face .

I’m always a little surprised that I am able to talk about these things so easily although it has been years since I had what I would call a workable faith. The constant turmoil and emotion I used to feel over faith and religion have settled into a benignly skeptical view of how these things do, or do not, work within a person’s life. For me, religion and faith are a framework, a set of ideas and ideals, that can be used to view the human condition and work for either good or ill.

To me, the power of the words and teachings of Christ are in the ideas that he expressed and not whether he is the Son of God or even if God exists at all. Christ taught a message of love and redemption that was so powerful it still resonates more than 2000 years later. The idea of Christ’s death and resurrection are more powerful to me than whether or not these events, in fact, occurred. It does not matter to me if God sat down and “wrote a book” or if the Bible is a collection of very powerful stories and ideas, many of them good, some of them bad.

I realize that to many people of faith, what I am saying is heresy. People have been burned at the stake for professing these beliefs. I’ve seen evangelical “Christians” viciously verbally attack people who share my beliefs. It was largely this ridged non-acceptance of other beliefs that drove me from a place of faith to a place of skepticism. To me, faith and religion are very personal issues. A person can be on fire with evangelical fervor and it means nothing unless the belief is somehow internalized. Then, even if a belief is internalized, it is not always to the benefit of the individual or society. An excellent example of this is the seemingly ubiquitous suicide bomber.

I believe that faith and religion can potentially be a powerful force for good in people’s lives. I believe in the ability of the individual to change if they have the desire. I believe in the individual worth of every human being. I believe that we are more than our worst act in life. This is why I do not believe I was lying to the inmate when I answered his questions even though I do not share his literal faith.

Crime and Punishment

2008-03-26T18:03:00.002-06:00

I’ve been a Detentions Counselor for a year now. After an adjustment period, I have I have fallen into my daily routines. Just like anything else that is witnessed over and over, a person can become used to human suffering. It can be easy to forget that every person I deal with on a daily basis is a human being with an inner life as rich as mine. It can be easy to forget that all of the people I meet with are in pain of one sort of another. They may not be able to express it, but the pain is there none the less.

Then, something will happen that shocks me out of my complacency. Something will take me by the scruff of the neck and shake me out of my stupor. I had just such an experience last week. I met twice with an inmate who, after two years of incarceration, began having acute panic attacks in the lead up to his sentencing. I met with him once before sentencing, and once after he received a 24 year prison sentence.

When I was first called to speak with the inmate, I looked up his criminal record and read about his case on the internet. I found that he had committed a serious crime (not sexual); the kind of crime that hits you in the gut when you hear about it. I thought to myself “I do not want to meet with this creep.” When sat down with him, though, I found, as I almost always do, that I was sitting across from a person and not a monster. I got to know him pretty well in the two or so hours I talked with him. I learned that, because of one impulsive act, and a couple of stupid decisions immediately afterward, he has forfeited the rest of his working life. He will be retirement age when he is released. The man sitting across the table from me was being burned, from the inside out, with guilt, remorse, and fear for the future. It was one of those instances when there is very little I can do or say. I can only sit and listen. At one point he asked, “why don’t you tell me it will be okay like everyone else does?” I had to tell him “because I don’t know for sure if it will be okay and I don’t want to lie to you.”

Since my meetings with him I have thought of him constantly. There is a conflict within me between the need for his punishment because of his crime, and the suffering human being I spoke with. I recently read the comments submitted to a local news paper’s web site that had reported on the inmate’s sentencing. They referred to him as “scum” and suggested that he should be turned over to a mob. I know the impulse. It was my own before I went up to speak with him.

On the same night I read the responses to an article about the parents of a young man who had murdered four people at a missionary training center and a church in Denver and Colorado Springs last winter. The responses to that article actually faulted the paper for daring to “humanize” the parents of a murder.

Why do we as humans have the impulse to dehumanize? Why do we have to remove the humanity of others? The root of many of the assaultive crimes committed by the inmates I speak with was their dehumanization of their victims. I’m not suggesting that criminals should not be punished or that we should be soft on crime. As I’ve written before, any civilization has a right to separate the criminal element that exists within them from those who abide by society’s laws.

It’s not easy, though, to allow the worst part of society to remain human. Even after a year of working face to face with hundreds of people who have committed crimes, I still have the visceral angry and dehumanizing reaction to stories I hear on the news. We run into trouble when we allow our dehumanizing instinct to be our only reaction to crime and the one that determines policy. At the very least it can lead to a dangerous environment in our jails and prisons, but ultimately it leads to the weakening of the core values of any society that values life and individual worth.

Admiral Fallon, We Hardly Knew Ye

2008-03-14T23:06:00.003-06:00

Admiral William Fallon, Commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East, abruptly resigned this week over what he called “perceived differences” between he and the White House over policy on Iran. Specifically, Admiral Fallon publicly challenged the Administration’s saber rattling over Iran’s nuclear program. This culminated with an article in Esquire Magazine titled The Man between War and Peace that quoted Fallon as saying "This constant drumbeat of conflict...is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions."

Admiral Fallon has been walking a fine line. He is prohibited by law from openly criticizing the Commander-in-Chief. You don’t get to his level of command in the armed services, however, by being a yes man, blindly accepting any policy or strategy offered by fellow military leaders or, more importantly, your civilian bosses. There is a long tradition of Generals and other command level staff discussing, sometimes heatedly, defense policy and strategy. In theory, our leaders in uniform are also supposed to have a running dialogue with the President and Congress. The Commander-in-Chief, as well as Congress, should have access to differing viewpoints and opinions when considering how and where to engage our armed forces, if they are to be engaged at all.

This Administration has shown over and over that it does not want to hear any opinion or point of view but its own. Admiral Fallon is just the latest in a long string of people who have lost their jobs for differing, publicly or privately, with the policies of the White House.

The Administration has stated over and over that they felt the invasion of Iraq was necessary based on the best intelligence available at the time. In reality, there were many in the intelligence community who did not feel that Iraq was a credible threat and warned against the very quagmire we now find ourselves in. Those who advised against the invasion were sidelined or worse.

The White House is fond of saying that the commanders on the ground, and not public opinion, will influence what course to take in Iraq. In truth, though, there have been military leaders who have questioned the current role of the U.S. in Iraq. Those who have taken issue with Iraq policy have been quietly shown the door in much the same way Admiral Fallon has.

Although the hubris and arrogance of this White House have led to one policy or military blunder after another, the real tragedy of Admiral Fallon’s departure is the loss of a brilliant military mind with nearly forty years of experience. Our armed forces are poorer for his loss. Once again, this Administration has chosen narrow ideology over what is best for our fighting men and women. We can only hope that Admiral Fallon is right and there will be no war with Iran. It is possible, though, that in the time they have left the White House will kick over one more Middle Eastern hornet’s nest as they make their exit.

Gingham Dog vs. Calico Cat

2008-03-08T18:53:00.003-07:00

Remember Eugene Field’s poem “The Duel” about the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat? They live together on a table top until one night they get into a fight in full view of the Old Dutch Clock and the Chinese Plate. The fur, or the cloth, flies, so to speak, and the next day there is nothing left of either of them because they have eaten each other up.

We are seeing a similar fight now for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Obama, the Gingham Dog, and Clinton, the Calico Cat, are “employing every tooth and claw/ In the awfullest way you ever saw” in their duel for the nomination. In the mean time, McCain, The Old Dutch Clock, has wound up the Republican nomination. All he has to do now, until the conventions in late summer, is make sure his mainspring stays tight, while “the air [is] littered… With bits of gingham and calico.” Like the Chinese Plate, all the Democrats can do is ineffectively “look very blue and wail oh dear! What shall we do!”

If things continue on their current course, the outcome for the Democrats will be bleak. When the fluff finally settles in August, there may not be much left to effectively oppose McCain in his bid for the White House. Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Power’s resignation from the Obama team this week after calling Clinton a Monster is only the latest incident of flame throwing that has been typical of both camps in recent weeks. Although both campaigns have tried to play their candidates off as the victim of underhanded attacks from the other, in reality both candidates have taken off the gloves and now seem to be locked in a death match.

The problem with such a scorched earth approach is that McCain does not have to spend any capital, either political or cash money, to oppose his future rival. Whether it’s attacking the weakness of each others proposed health care policies, or squabbling over who would be best prepared to answer the Red Phone at three in the morning in the White House, the Democratic candidates are doing McCain’s work for him.

Obama and Clinton need to grow up, put their personal pride and ambition aside, and do what is right, not only for their party, but for the nation. One of them needs to graciously bow out, it doesn’t matter which one really, or the ticket needs to be consolidated with one or the other at the top. If not, McCain is going to sail into the Oval Office effectively unopposed. The Democrats might claim that the election was somehow stolen, but, like the dog and cat of the poem, Clinton and Obama will have simply eaten each other up.

Don't Say You Weren't Warned

2008-03-05T16:01:00.003-07:00

If there is one thing that the past seven years of the Bush Administration has convinced me, it is that our Government is definitely NOT responsive to the average constituent. Carl Rove and his ilk carefully constructed a plan to make the average American citizen feel completely impotent to effect change. Our elected officials only respond to big money or, in rare occasions, to massive, well organized, public pressure orchestrated with big money. This, however, has not stopped me from writing letters. Although I know that my letters, if read by anyone, are read by a low level lackey, I still write them. It has a cathartic effect on me. After I write a letter I can say, “well, at least I didn’t do nothing.”

Below is a letter I wrote to Senator Laehy, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, after Michael B. Mukasey was confirmed as Attorney General. I include it here, so long after the fact, because Mukasey has recently refused to investigate members of the current Administration for Contempt of Congress after they ignored Congressional subpoenas. He continues to refuse to qualify water boarding as torture. All I can say is… I told you so.

Patrick J. Laehy, Chairman
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office BuildingWashington, DC 20510

Senator Laehy,

My name is Pirate Aggro. I am a Social Worker living and working in Colorado. I was surprised and saddened last week to read that your fellow committee members, Senators Schumer and Feinstein, backed the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey for Attorney General despite his refusal to clearly state that the interrogation technique of water boarding is torture. As I’m sure you know, this technique has been used by totalitarian regimes, despots, and dictators throughout history. The vast majority of experts, including those in our own armed forces, feel that there is no question that water boarding is torture. Mr. Mukasey’s refusal to clearly condemn the use of this technique means the United States will continue to be perceived by the world as giving tacit support to torture now that he has become Attorney General.

Republicans over the years have shown again and again their willingness and ability to block Democratic nominations for political posts for ideological reasons. Why are the Democrats unable to do the same? Why didn’t the Democrats on the Committee simply tell the President that any nominee not willing to clearly condemn torture would not make it through committee? I realize a great deal of politics requires compromise and diplomacy. In this instance, however, if the Democrats on the Committee were unable to see the implicit condoning of torture as a bright line that should not be crossed, then when would they willing to draw a line? Are Democrats willing to take a solid stand against this President on any issue? The Judiciary Committee missed an important opportunity to stand for justice and core American values.

Sincerely,

Pirate Aggro
Colorado

Outsourcing Defense

2008-03-03T14:17:00.004-07:00

I often tell people that, after the past seven years, there is nothing our government could do that would surprise me. I’ve been proven wrong once again. Last week the Pentagon announced that it is awarding the contract for the next generation of mid-air refueling tankers to Airbus, a French company, instead of the American company Boeing who has held the contract for 40 years.

The Contract which is valued somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 billion dollars is one of largest in history. Boeing officials last week seemed so stunned to have lost the contract that they were almost beyond speech. I don’t blame them. The loss of the contract is another huge blow to a company that has already seen its market share drastically eroded in recent years by their European rival Airbus. Thousands of people will be thrown out of work while their jobs are outsourced to another country. Although Airbus is supposedly partnering with Northrup Grummond on the project, the plane that will meet our armed force’s mid-air refueling needs for the foreseeable future will essentially be a French made plane.

Although I thought the whole fiasco was ridiculous at the time, wasn’t it our government that hated the French so much that they renamed french-fries freedom fries by Congressional mandate? Now Congress is prepared to pour billions of dollars into the French economy? How can this been good for the United States?

I realize that Boeing may have lost this contract through a combination of hubris, mismanagement, and corruption. Airbus’ design may have, in fact, been better and cheaper than Boeing’s. Of course we want the best possible equipment for our armed forces. Boeing’s loss of this critical contract, though, is indicative of the erosion of US manufacturing capacity as a result of EVERYTHING being outsourced. The fact that we are now outsourcing primary defense contracts means manufacturing capacity in this country has reached a critical level.

A large factor in the United States prevailing in the Second World War had to do with our ability to covert our manufacturing sector in to a war machine that could be brought to bear against the Axis. If the US were called on to meet a similar threat now, would we be able to rise to the challenge or will we be depending on other countries to provide our weaponry?

Academy Awards?

2008-02-27T18:42:00.003-07:00

The Academy Awards were handed out last week with all the usual hoopla and glitz. I, however, didn’t watch one minute of the broadcast. With the exception of “No Country for Old Men” I had no idea who had been nominated for what and could have cared less about the outcome. In fact, I feel that the Academy Awards is, for the most part, a huge waste of time.

I didn’t always feel this way. Until I became a social worker, I spent my entire educational and professional career in the Entertainment Industry. I used to believe that movies and theater had the power and potential to “influence and shape society.” I moved to Los Angeles in the late 90’s so that I could be close to the industry and just assumed that I would be working in some aspect of entertainment. It didn’t take long before I realized that making movies, like sausage, is something that is best left unseen. I became disgusted by the pretension and greed of Hollywood. I became tired of the narcissism of actors and other performers. I realized that society drives movies and not the other way around. Movies are just another disposable commodity to be consumed and then forgotten.

Then, I realized one day that I did not want to lead the itinerant life of someone in the “industry.” I didn’t want to be 40 or 50 years old, working in some back-lot of a studio or on the staff of a theater department or theater scraping for every dollar and moving from job to job. That’s when I made the leap to Social Work. Not a great money earner either but I know there will always be social ills needing to be addressed and there wont be 1000 hacks applying for every position.

What repelled me most from the Entertainment Industry is how it seems to have totally consumed the heart and mind of America. Americans have to be entertained at all costs. We are obsessed with the trivial. The most important people in our society are not the people who do things but the people who pretend to be the people doing things in movies and television.

When Tom Cruise, a person with barely a high school education, makes pronouncements about psychiatry, it’s reported as if he is a legitimate commentator. NGO’s in Africa labor for decades toiling in obscurity to end suffering, but it takes a visit from a rock star, Bono, to attract the attention of the world. A fleeting attention. Billions of people live on less than one dollar a day but movie companies have no trouble spending 100 million to produce one movie. I decided to become a social worker because I wanted to do something. I didn’t want to pretend to do something.

Of course I am being a self righteous liberal. I miss being involved. I miss Los Angeles like a missing limb. I have to admit that if someone called and said “we’d like you to be on the writing staff of The Simpsons” I’d be on the next plane. I miss writing plays and participating in theatre and film. I still believe that it is possible to be an artist in the “industry” but I see it for what it is. I still plan to write and perhaps act again if the opportunity ever presents its self. For now, though, I am happy to chip away at the mountain of human suffering that seems to be present everywhere.

What's the Point?

2008-02-20T11:09:00.004-07:00

I took a week of paternity leave to be with my wife, daughter, and new son. I mostly write these blog entries when I am “monitoring” inmates as they make their call. (Yes it’s true you get a free phone call if you get thrown in the clink.) So I catch five minutes here, ten there, until I finally have a completed entry. Its not the careful composition and rewriting that I am used to. I spent two years writing my masters thesis including research. When I was writing plays it took me about a year to finish a play from start to finish. Now I write on the fly with barely enough time to proof read. I told myself that I would sit down at home and compose an entry while I was on leave but of course I never had the time.

I have to ask myself, what is the point? Why am I writing this blog. As far as I can tell nobody reads it unless they come across it by accident. I don’t think I am getting much traffic from the “next blog” button any more because that feature has become choked with so much crap. I don’t really tell anyone about the blog’s existence. My wife knows the blog exists but I don’t think she visits. I let my best friend from high school know about it but he refuses to visit on principle. He thinks that blogs are pretentious and believes that blog is a made up word.

He’s right though. Blogs are pretentious. Why do we write them? If bloggers didn’t at least hope to be read then they would keep a journal and lock it away in a safe. Why do I think that what I have to say is any more important than anyone else’s? What makes me special? I also have to censor myself here now a little more than in the past. It’s only a matter of time before the Deputies find the blog so I can’t say anything that would put my job in any kind of jeopardy. They already found a posting of me singing “We are the Champions” with my four-year-old daughter on YouTube, and a pilot I did for a children’s show when I was living in Los Angeles where I played a bearded Russian dare devil who shoots himself out of a cannon. When you have little to do for twelve hours but open and close cell doors it gives you lots of time to troll the web.

Whatever the reason I’m going to keep doing it. Until I don’t… I get some sort of satisfaction out of it and it keeps my mind working in a way it wouldn’t if I wasn’t maintaining a blog. I’ll keep learning how to make my blog more attractive to visiters. I’ll try to write about things that are more interesting. Even if people don’t visit it’s still a good exercise and makes me feel that my life is about more than being a Jail Counselor. So here I am. For now anyway.

Is This Any Way to Choose a President?

2008-02-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

Its only February and already there are only three candidates in the presidential race that have any realistic chance of winning the Whitehouse, one on the Republican side, and two on the Democratic. Much of America won’t even have the opportunity to participate in the nomination process in any meaningful way. Candidates have been dropping out on both sides since the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire in January, and not just the crackpot candidates either.

In an attempt to give their states a voice in the nominating process, some states have moved their primaries earlier in the year. The Democrats stripped two states, South Dakota and Minnesota, of their delegate votes at the convention later this year because they moved their primaries earlier than party rules allow. Colorado also jumped on this band wagon by moving its caucuses from March to Super Tuesday.

My question is, why do Iowa and New Hampshire get to play such a big role in selecting a president? Why is the nominating process a horse race between states? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have one national primary election on the same day so that all states could participate in the nomination process? Shouldn’t every registered voter who wishes to do so have the right to vote for the candidate of their choice before they drop out of the race?

The process only gets more bizarre. After all the primaries have taken place and all the delegates allotted, both of the major parties hold their nominating conventions were delegates “vote” on their nominee. In reality the outcome is 100% certain. I saw this first hand in 2000 when I worked the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. I have to say that the experience was like attending a week long rock concert, but as far as who the nominee would be, there was never any question, Gore would get the nod. When a handful of delegates from a Southern state wanted to cast their vote for a candidate who had dropped out the race months before, I delivered a sharply worded, hand written, note from the Secretary of the Democratic National Committee telling them to tow the party line.

After the convention, we have a relatively brief “campaign” season although, as we all know, the candidates have been campaigning for years. Then we vote and we see a similar event take place as we did in the primaries. The states on the eastern half of the country are called long before the states on the western half finish voting. Many voters stay home when they see the way the wind is blowing.

Finally we have the Electoral Collage were again a group of people “vote” to officially select our president. The hitch is that because of the way the Electoral Collage is set up, a President can win enough votes in the Collage to be elected without having the votes of the majority of voters. This is exactly what happened in 2000 and how we ended up with the President we have now… The first time.

Is this any way to select the leader of the free world? Shouldn’t every American who is eligible to vote know that their vote counts just as much if they live in Colorado as it would if they lived in New Hampshire or New York? There must be some reason why the American people put up with such an antiquated system that disenfranchises so many people. I just don’t know what that reason could possibly be.

Sub-Prime Colorado

2008-01-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

My wife and I recently bought a house, our first, and are settling in to the "American dream." We spent a good six months looking for the right place all over Denver. We looked at houses in every area from urban semi-detached houses in the heart of the city similar to the one we lived in for 8 years in Los Angeles, to cabins in small mountain communities. Without exception, every house we looked at in our price rage was either already bank owned, or under foreclosure. We had a lot of opportunity to see first hand the havoc that the sub-prime mortgage meltdown has caused to ordinary people here in Colorado. Our good fortune at being able to buy in this market was a direct result of someone else’s misfortune.

Here in Colorado, we rank near the top in the number of foreclosures since the sub-prime crisis began. There are literally tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of families that have lost their homes because of skyrocketing adjustable mortgage rates. As my wife and I drove around Denver, there were streets we looked down were ten houses were for sale in a few blocks. What struck me about the number of foreclosures, though, is not necessarily the number of houses for sale and under foreclosure, but that all of these houses were in middle-class neighborhoods.

The term Sub-Prime is a kind of misnomer; leading people to think that it is only the lower class or people with bad credit that are being hit by the crisis. In reality, the sub-prime crisis is taking direct aim at America's shrinking middle class. The family who lived in our house before us had not experienced a change in their finances. They were business owners with kids living in a modest middle-class house. The mistake they made was to take on a mortgage with an adjustable rate. When the initial low teaser rate skyrocketed after the initial period of the mortgage, they were unable to keep up with their payments and unable to refinance. I can also see the impact of the crisis among those I know. A close friend from high school is struggling to keep their house because of spiraling interest rates on their loan, and a co-worker lost her house just last month under the same circumstances. It’s a scenario that is playing out in nearly every middle-class community in America in one way or another.

In general, the people loosing their houses are not doing so because they got into more house than they could afford. Instead, they fell victim to banks and lenders who promised them an adjustable rate was the best way to finance their purchase. These adjustable rate mortgages or ARMs as they are called, were the hot item during the heady days when home values could increase by up to ten percent a year. Nearly all these people were promised that they would be able to easily refinance before their rates adjusted. Home buyers thought they would be crazy to pay more for a traditional mortgage. It was only when years later that they discovered that, like my friend from high school, they could qualify for a loan, but could not now qualify to refinance.

Back in the day, home loans were made on the regional if not local level. Banks and lenders carefully assessed risk before lending money for a home. Interest rates depended much more on the level of risk a lender was taking, and less on bringing in buyers at any cost no matter how great the risk. Now, it is not uncommon for a loan to be issued by a bank in a different region if not a different country. Loans are totally disconnected from the homebuyer and their community. Today's home loans are sold five or six times to other lenders further distancing themselves from the buyer and giving the lender a false sense of security. Finally, these loans have been bundled and sold as investments to pension funds and the like. It becomes apparent under these circumstances that if the housing market sneezes, the economy catches cold.

This is what is happening now. New government numbers out today show that the economy grew by only a fraction of one percent in the last quarter of 2007. America is apparently headed for the second recession in the last 8 years. This one is directly tied to the housing market and caused by predatory practices on the part of banks and lenders and greed on the part of investors. This time, however, the recession will mean not just a contraction of the economy, but a contraction of the middle class as thousands loose their homes. The gap between the haves and the have nots will grow even wider as fewer and fewer Americans own their own home.

So what is the government’s response to the looming recession? Are they planning real intervention by regulating predatory lending practices? Are they requiring banks to work with home owners so that they don't loose their homes? Are they investing in areas of the economy that can be a true economic engine in the future? In a word, no. The government’s response to this crisis a meaningless Band-Aid that will placate the American public in an election year. Every American household will recieve a tax rebate that does not equal even one payment on the average home. The Republicans are pushing the mesure because they don't want voters to take thier wrath out on them in November. The Democrats are supporting the mesure because they don't want to be seen as standing in the way of a stimulus package that could avert a recession. In addition, the government will throw more money at the banks that made the bad loans in the first place.

I can only hope that all of those affected by the sub-prime crisis will have a long memory. I hope the American public will will hold our leaders, both Republican and Democrat, accountable for their actions, or lack of action, in the next few months. I can only hope that the candidates for president will speak on this subject in a substanitive way and that the people will put the candidate with the best plan for America in power.

The WHO vs. The Lancet

2008-01-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

Early last week, the World Health Organization, (WHO) released a comprehensive study estimating the number of Iraqi deaths attributed to violence in the first three years after the U.S. invasion in 2003. The WHO's findings were far lower than a study published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, in 2006. While The Lancet study estimated that 661,000 Iraqis had died as a result of violence during the years of the study, the WHO study estimated only a quarter of that number, 151,000, had been killed.

The US government has maintained throughout the conflict that they do not track civilian or enemy deaths. When asked why this was the case, General Tommy Franks infamously stated "we don't do body counts." While it is in the interest of the US not to publicise the unpleasant realities of war that might turn public opinion against it, the refusal to count or estimate the Iraqi dead leaves the job to others, all supposedly with their own personal and political motivations.

When the Lancet study was initially published, supporters of the war cried foul and brought into question the validity of the study, and the motivation of those who undertook it. They also questioned the timing, not without reason, of its release so close to the mid-term elections in the US. Elections which, if you remember, threw control of both the House and Senate to the Democrats. Now, the same supporters of the current administration are pointing to the new study and saying "See! We knew it! The Lancet study was just a politically motivated tactic to turn popular opinion against the war." This tendency to accept the numbers from one study and reject another purely based on whether or not it supports a certain point of view, shows a fundamental misunderstanding about statistics and how they are used in the political arena.

Of course, statistics have always used towards political means and have been twisted to support one point of view or another. Usually, however, by looking closely at the methodology of a given study, and the credentials of those conducting it, it is possible to find out if the study is valid and if it really supports any given political bent. In the case of the Lancet and the WHO study, both used the same proven statistical method for arriving at their findings. Both studies were conducted by well respected, generally politically neutral, organizations. The Lancet is likely the most prestigious medical journal in Europe. A study that was statistically invalid or used questionable methods would have little chance of passing the rigorous peer review required for such a publication. The WHO is, of course, the organization charged by the United Nations with monitoring world health and getting medical treatment to the most vulnerable in the world, regardless of the politics that exist in each country.

If neither study, then, had a political ax to grind, and each was conducted by a respected organization with valid methods, how could they arrive at such different numbers? There are several factors that likely led to such a wide differences. The first is that the WHO study interviewed 23 times as many households as the Lancet study. This means that the WHO study was better able to get the big picture than the smaller lancet study.

Another contributing factor was the fact that the WHO study was conducted by representatives of the Iraqi government. Les Roberts, an epidemiologist who worked on the Lancet study but also supports the new one states, "My gut feeling is that most of the difference between the two studies is a reluctance to report to the government a death due to violence... If your son is fighting the government and died, that may not be something you'd want to admit to the government." This could have led to the sample families under reporting deaths due to violence.

Finally, 11 percent of the households randomly selected for sampling in the WHO study were not interviewed because it was too dangerous to do so. As is evidenced by recent violence in Iraq, government workers in Iraq are often the target of militant and insurgent attacks. While the government workers collecting the data risked their lives to do so, they still were not able to reach some of the households reached by the Lancet study. The Lancet study also employed native speakers to conduct the survey, but they did not have the political barrier and suspicion created by being an Iraqi government workers. Statistically speaking, missing 11 percent of the random sample is a huge number and one that could fundamentally change the outcome of the study significantly.

To me, arguing over which study is more valid is pointless. Although I happen to believe the WHO study is likely a more accurate estimation due to its vastly larger sample size, the outcome of both studies is startling. Both numbers are unacceptable in that each represents a human being who is dead as a direct result of violence. Imagine if 661,000 Americans died each year from a preventable disease. Would the American public be any less inclined to be upset if only 151,000 died? I doubt it. So why is it any more acceptable when the people dieing are Iraqi and the cause of death is violence? The numbers also only represent the tip of the iceberg. Imagine how fractured the social and political fabric of a country must be to result in this many deaths?

The real question these numbers raise is not how many have died but why they are dead? I am not so naive that I believe war is completely avoidable. I believe sovereign countries have the right to defend themselves. There will be times when people have to fight and die to maintain freedom or protect livelihood. While it is ridiculous to reduce war to good wars and bad wars, I do think it is important to ask whether this war was necessary? Have the deaths of so many people resulted in a safer world or a better more dignified life for all Americans or Iraqis? I think its pretty clear the answer is no. Iraq is on the brink of civil war and America is starkly divided because the administration chose to act unilaterally without coming to any consensus with the American people or our allies. In many ways America has lost the moral high ground as a result of this conflict.

We now we have a moral duty to fix, to the extent possible, the damage caused. A hundred thousand lives will not be restored. The answer is not America's ability to inflict "shock and awe" through our military which is by far the most powerful in the world. Instead, the answer lies in the generous heart of America. The only real solution to such destruction is diplomacy and fence mending. I am interested, and terrified, to see how the next quarter century will play out. Hopefully America will choose leaders who are willing to lead.

Jesus Camp

2008-01-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

This posting grew out of a response to another blog posting.

I just saw Jesus Camp for the first time this weekend. My friend had insisted that I see the movie since religion is an ongoing topic of discussion between us. I put off seeing the movie because I know it would upset me… and it did. I figured, though, that since I am thinking and writing about religion so much lately, that I might as well take the plunge and see the film.

The movie is scary. Scary, that is, for anyone who is not an Evangelical Christian. The movie follows an Evangelical Pastor, Becky Fischer, and her efforts to radicalize children attending her camp. There is no narration in the film and only three or four places were information is given in text. The “story” is completely told by the Pastor Fischer and the children attending her camp. At one point, she states that she wants to create fanatical Christians (I believe she actually used the world fanatical), who are just as willing to die for their cause as the Muslim extremists who blow themselves up in the name of their religion. She makes no secret that the goal of radical Evangelicals is total domination of American Culture believing that we live in what she calls “a sick old world” that needs to be healed by her brand of inflexible and intolerant Christianity. I’ve read that Evangelicals love the movie, and that the film makers actually premiered the film by touring mega-churches.

To me the film does two things. It shows how easily children can be exploited and indoctrinated by someone who shows a little interest in them. It also depicts the fundamental cultural change that is taking place in America everywhere but on the coasts. The Children in the movie are so eager to please by repeating back the dogma that is fed to them at camp. At one point a boy states that he was saved when he was five years old “because he wanted something better for his life.” While I believe that religious belief can and should be passed on to children by their parents, Pastors, Priests and peers, what I saw in Jesus Camp seemed more like indoctrination and exploitation. The children were not being given a moral compass by which to lead their lives based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Instead they were being given a cudgel to smash down any belief that contradicts their own. The children are told, this is what it is, it is the only truth, and if you don’t believe this way then you are wrong.

The Fischer's mission to radicalize Christian Children will, of course, lead to many of them become radical adults, uncompromising in their beliefs, and unwilling to tolerate the existence of others who feel differently. The radical mindset may not be a real majority, but they have already made startling inroads into American Culture. When I was growing up in Colorado, radical Christians were around, but they were a fringe group not to be taken seriously and easily ignored. Now, living in the heartland again after a 9 year absence, the landscape has changed. Now it is hard to hear a point of view other than the radical religious right. Now it is impossible to ignore them because, as the woman in the movie says, their goal is total domination. More moderate voices have been silenced. The more moderate churches are dwindling in the shadow of the mega-churches.

I Do Not Heart Huckabee

2008-01-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

I've been telling myself, and anyone else who will listen, to be ready for a Republican to win the Presidential race. My parents say "No! How could it possibly happen?" I point out to them that if Bush could win, actually win, the election last time, anything is possible. After all, the Republicans could put ANYBODY up and they would look better than our current situation.

Since the second Clinton victory, Dems just seem totally incapable of doing ANYTHING! They can not get together long enough to put together any kind of coherent plan to stop the Bush freight train. I've given up on them. Given up in the sense that I don't look to them any longer to be a viable counter weight to Bush and his ilk. What I've actually given up on is the political system in this country.

Now, though, it seems there is another freight train coming down the tracks. Mike Huckabee. Huckabee came out of nowhere to win the Iowa Caucuses last night. Before he jumped in, I'd been looking at the cast of Republican hopefuls and had decided that, since Republican victory is probably inevitable, I could probably live with any of them. Anyone would be better than what we have, right? I'm not so sure now. The idea of Huckabee being the next president fills me with dread.

As I've reflected on why this is I've had to confront my own prejudices. While I'm bothered by Huckabee's attacks on Romney because of his faith, and his social conservatism, my knee jerk dislike for Huckabee comes almost entirely from the fact that he is an Evangelical Christian minister. This, I guess makes me just as bad as the knee jerk Christians who were attacking Romney. My parents have said he is essentially a moderate, not a friend of Wall Street, and believes in having a strong social safety net. Huckabee, however, running on his Christian Evangelicalism. If elected, the tradition of separation of church and state that has been a founding principle of this country will disappear. Huckabee also supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This, by the way, is why I would never vote for Romney either although I defended him in earlier postings.

A Huckabee victory will mean that the politics of exclusion, of us and them, of I'm right and you are wrong, will continue. America will continue to become more and more divided and more isolated from the world community. Less and less substance will come out of Congress. I have the feeling that these changes have already taken place in the psyche of America. I hope not, but a Huckabee victory would confirm this suspicion. If the next President is going to be a Republican, please don't let it be Mike Huckabee.

The Controversy That Wasn't

2007-12-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

My wife, daughter and I spent a quiet Christmas in my home town in Northern Colorado. While we were there, my Mother mentioned that, in the run up to Christmas, there had been a huge controversy this year over the Christmas decorations downtown in the upscale shopping area called Old Town.

Apparently, last year the Jewish community had asked to put up a Menorah as part of the holiday decorations and the city had declined. As a result, the City Counsel had formed an advisory committee to study the issue and to recommend how to fairly deal with such requests in the future. Over the course of several months, the committee came up with several different alternatives and put them into a report that was supposed to be turned over to the City Counsel for consideration. One of these recommendations was that only white lights be used down town instead of colored lights. Before this or any recommendation could be delivered to the City Counsel, however, some concerned citizen leaked the committee's draft report to the public.

What followed was a flood of hysterical letters to the Editor of the local news paper accusing the City Counsel of trying to take Christ out of Christmas, that they were waging war on Christmas, calling for their ouster, etc. etc. Several letters stated that if the decorations in Old Town were changed, that they would take their business elsewhere; this despite the fact that the merchants in Old Town had nothing to do with the City Council or Advisory Committee. Finally a spokesman for the City Counsel stated the leaked document came from an advisory committee with no policy making power, and that the City Council had not even seen the recommendations yet.

To begin with, I will concede that it was silly of the City Council to have an advisory committee on such a non-issue, but let's face it, its typical of government, particularly city government. I will also concede that the recommendation of white instead of colored lights is obtuse and totally meaningless. I was not aware that colored lights have any more religious significance than colored lights. The idea that the City Council is trying to wage war on Christmas, though, or take Christ out of Christmas is ridiculous. As if the City Council is some cabal of Anti-Christs who have been scheming for years to put themselves in a position where they can effectively wage war on Christmas in a Colorado backwater.

What happened in my home town is just one example of how some Christians get concerned over pointless things. Every year the hand-wringers are all over the media saying that this person or that organization are trying to take Christ out of Christmas. Just last week I saw an advertisement for a button that said "It's Okay to Say Merry Christmas To Me." Had people stopped saying merry Christmas? If they had I didn't notice. The truth of the matter is, NO ONE is trying to take anything out of Christmas. No one is trying to get us to stop using colored lights. No one is trying to get us to stop wishing each other Merry Christmas. Despite it's steady commercialization, Christmas is still celebrated by millions of families across the United States and, to those who believe, Christ is still at the center of that celebration. It is not as if anyone has said "Well, the City Council decided to put up white lights this year instead of colored so I guess we won't include Christ in our Christmas celebrations this year." It's a manufactured controversy and there is an element of Christian extremists that excel at them.

I'll be the first to say that the commercialization of Christmas is nauseating. By the end of the season I am sick to death of the commercials that flood the television and radio. If the Chicken Littles that say Christ is getting taken out of Christmas really want to turn the tide, though, they should stay out of the stores during Christmas time. If the retailers didn't think they could wring more dollars out of our pockets by promoting Christmas they wouldn't make it the marketing frenzy that it is. The super market near our home was open on Christmas Day. This means the employees there couldn't spend Christmas with their families. This is much closer to taking the true meaning out of Christmas than the color of the decorations in Old Town.

I've seen this kind of hyperbolic pointlessness in my own church. In my congregation in Los Angeles, our Pastor lead a campaign against pornography which was for sale within eyesight of our church at a news stand. Our Chapel was right in the middle of the city so there were hundreds of businesses close by, one of which happened to be an open-air news stand which had one small row of pornographic magazines. Countless hours and dollars were spent on what ultimately was a pointless venture. The pornography was going nowhere. Neither was the church. I don't like pornography. I wasn't thrilled to have it sold so close to our church building. But it seemed to me that there were better places the congregation could have put its energy. Los Angeles, like any large city, is awash in human suffering. There was so much the congregation could have done that would have made a real difference in real people's lives. Instead they chose to throw their effort into another manufactured crisis.

As I've written before, religion has the potential for both evil and good impact on society. It also has the potential for uselessness. When trouble is manufactured, as it was with the controversy over the lights in Old Town, then religion looses its potential to impact for good. Religions should stand for their beliefs, but if a stand is taken there should actually be something to stand against.

I Am, You Aren't

2007-12-22T15:49:00.000-07:00

I was reading some of the “Christian” themed blogs last night and was shocked by the level of venom directed at Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney. Why? Because Mr. Romney is a Mormon. Apparently this disqualifies Mr. Romney from being the President of the United States and, if you believe the blogs, makes him a bad, if not evil, person. The “Christian” writers of these blogs report that Mormons are not Christians. Their arguments are based on mostly minor, and some major, theological differences between Evangelical Christians and Mormons.

Not one of these “Christian” writers made any comment about Romney’s abilities as a leader or politician. Romney is, as most Mormons are, a mainline, right wing conservative. He is both a social and fiscal conservative. Romney has an excellent conservative track record as the Governor of Massachusetts. Several years ago when Utah managed to screw the planning and preparation for the Olympics up, it was Romney that came in and pulled their hinnies out of the fire. Does any of this matter to the “Christian” bloggers? No. In the eyes of these writers, you must be a mainline Evangelical Christian to qualify for the highest job in the Country.

So here is my pronouncement on the “Christian” bloggers attacking Romney. You aren’t Christian. Because you don’t believe in Christ in exactly the same way the Mormons do… or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Seventh Day Adventists, or most laughably the Catholics. (Laughably because “Christians” don’t believe they are Christian either.) Because you don’t believe exactly like these other sects, I wholly reject you both as a Christian and as a human being. Nothing you do in life can make up for these differences. I assume you are a bad person.

Okay… of course I am being facetious. ANYONE who believes in Christ is a Christian by definition. Even the mean spirited “Christian” bloggers are Christian, much as I cringe to admit it. There may be differences both major and minor in how different sects view Christ, but anyone who has Christ as the center of their religious practice is a Christian. I would never presume to tell someone of another faith that they are or are not Christian, and remember I come at this from a mostly agnostic point of view. The “Christian” bloggers may say different, but just because they say it doesn’t make it so, much as they would like to believe they have a corner on Jesus. I have been putting the word “Christian” in quotes in this post. That’s a little facetious too. But I do want to draw a distinction between these “Christians” attacking a fellow Christian of another sect and Christians who accept all people of the Christian faith and in a larger sense, all of humanity. These Christians still exist in America, although it seems they have largely disappeared from public discourse.

Now there is an example in the world of what the ultimate end of sectarian in-fighting is. It’s called Iraq. The Sunnis and the Shiites can’t kill each other fast enough there. They barely view each other as human. Is this what we want here in America? It’s what we’re sliding towards if more reasonable minds don’t intervene. Maybe it won’t come to killing each other. But it will ultimately lead to a divided and therefore weaker America. So “Christian” bloggers, how bout following the central idea Christ’s teachings? Love one another.

BELIEF

2007-12-19T18:42:00.001-07:00

The other day I watched the trailer for a documentary called "The God Who Wasn't There" on YouTube. The movie appears to be a well made but armature film that attempts to prove that Jesus, or at least the Jesus as presented in the Bible, is a fabrication of the apostles decades after his death. The argument is pretty persuasive and based on indisputable historical fact about the timeline for the writing of the Gospels. As far as I can tell, the film maker is attempting to undermine Christian faith by destroying the keystone of the Christian religion, Christ.

When I was a person of what I'll call Evangelical faith several years ago, I had my own experiences with a person who made it his purpose in life to undermine my belief in Christ as Savior by laying out logical and indisputable arguments. It worked. As I have written before I have largely lost my faith. Although I still attend church, and religion is still part of my life, I mostly go through the motions . I will never again be able to have the kind of faith I did, but in some way it fulfills some need in my life. I still love the story of the life of Christ and I try to live by his admonition to "Love one another." The fervent belief I once had in Christ, however, and the comfort that went with it are gone.

Religious people, however, engage in the same kind of attempts to undermine each others beliefs. When I did have an Evangelical faith, the most personal attacks I have ever experienced in my life came from fellow Christians from other denominations. It was not enough just to simply state "that is not the way I personally believe," instead they had to seek the wholesale destruction of my own belief. They literally viewed me as an evil person even though our personal faith almost entirely overlapped and differed in relatively insignificant ways. Now, even in my own denomination, people there are unwilling to tolerate the presence of a person with an agnostic bent, such as myself, in their congregation. In their eyes I someone to be distrusted. They view my lack of faith as a personal flaw. This means that I am a perpetual outsider in the faith of my birth.

This propensity to attack others beliefs seems to permeate our society and perhaps the human race. The impulse to destroy fundamental belief represents one of the most ugly and dangerous aspects of humanity. We dehumanize them and this ultimately leads to bloodshed. Would we have had the Holocaust, Rwanda, the wars in the Balkans, and 9/11 if we as humans were more tolerant of each others central beliefs? But it does not need to be so dramatic. This type of intolerance tears at the fabric of any society. Why are atheists so bent on the destruction of faith? Why are the sects of the world so bent on the destruction the central tenants of other religions.

I believe that there are people with genuine faith in every religion. I know this because I have been there. Faith is not a flaw. I also believe that there are people without faith and that they are also good people. I've been there too. Skepticism, even disbelief is not a flaw. I believe faith, lack of faith, and everything in between can co-exist. I don't believe we have to accept every mode of belief. I even believe we can believe that others are wrong without dehumanizing them. We have to be willing to see each other as human beings with the same basic needs as every other human being on the planet. Until we do this, humanity will continue an endless cycle of spiritual, psychological, and physical violence.

RUST

2007-12-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

Still here. Still keeping this blog although its badly rusted. At lest I don't want to have the account dust binned for inactivity. I have no idea how long Google keeps these accounts active if they are not posted to. Maybe forever. Anyway... It's been a hard landing here in Colorado. Although I grew up here it really doesn't feel like "home" the way Southern California did. I've settled into my job as a counselor to the inmates in a county jail. My wife and I bought a house last month. A new baby will arrive at the end of next month. I guess I'm hitting all the markers a man of my age and profession should. I can't help feeling that I am plodding though without really being aware.

I want to become a real blogger to keep my writing skills sharp. My wife bought me all the necessary equipment last Christmas to create a podcast. I've used the mic quite a bit actually. My daughter will go to the library and check out a stack of books. She will sit on my lap and I will read them to her into the mic. I then burn these sessions onto a CD. My daughter listens to them when she goes to bed at night and I figure they will be a good record in future years. Currently I am recording a one-man-show that Lee Blessing wrote a few years ago about a man who is reincarnated as his enemies dog. I'm going to give this to my family for Christmas. Don't worry Copyright holder. It will go no further than this.

So there I am. Hope I'll be back sooner than a year from now.

Supreme Court Shows Its Stuff

2006-05-31T13:51:00.000-06:00

The Supreme Court today once again showed that it is more concerned with protecting the rights of Big Government and Big Business than they are about protecting the rights of ordinary Americans. In a four to five decision the Court sided with the government when it said that public employees are not protected by the First Amendment when they are acting in the capacity of their jobs. The case in question involved a Deputy Los Angeles District Attorney who was punished for questioning the tactics used to obtain a search warrant.

In a preview of what will, no doubt, become a pattern at the nations highest court, Chief Justice Roberts, Kennedy, and Alito joined big gov, big biz sweethearts, Thomas and Scalia, in siding against the wistleblower. The ruling joins a growing list of recent decisions in areas such as eminent domain, search and seizure, and free speech, in which it has sided with government or big business against ordinary Americans.

Today's ruling bothers me for two reason. On the most basic level, the decision will act as a deterrent to wistelblowers in the future. What public servant is going to bring wrongdoing to light if it means they will face retaliation? The case in question is particularly troubling because it involves a government agency obtaining a search warrant under dubious circumstances. By siding with the government, the court has basically given a wink and a nod to those who would erode our basic rights.

On another level, the decision is disturbing because it so obviously goes against the Constitution. The first Amendment reads "Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievance." "NO LAW!" It says it right there. Yet Congress and the Judiciary branch have repeatedly written laws or made decisions that infringe on the rights the founding fathers felt were so important they put them first in the Constitution. Yet, for the most part, the American people sit placidly by while their rights are taken away because it does not directly effect their lives.

Today's ruling is just one more example to me that our rights exist completely at the whim of a few, mostly white, mostly rich, men. Even if the American people were unhappy with today's decision there is nothing that can be done about it because, big surprise, they are the highest court in the land. There is no higher authority, at least as far as mortal men go. Do we think Congress is going to intercede to protect the rights in the Constitution? Not likely. Their track record is worse than the Supreme Court's when it comes with siding with the powerful. Our rights are, in two words, an illusion.

Big Brother is Watching

2006-05-16T18:32:00.000-06:00

What is going on in America? It feels like we are slowly slipping into some kind of Orwellian nightmare, and no one cares. The only difference been the society in 1984, and ours in 2006, is that we are being watched by Big Brother with big fat smiles on our faces. As long as we can watch American Idol and get coffee at Starbucks we are happy. I never would have thought that America would let slide the direct violations of our core beliefs that we have. Beliefs like, due process, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, to name a couple. Do we believe in what the Bill of Rights says we believe in, or is it really that our rights are completely at the whim of a few men?

A few weeks ago we learned that the Executive Branch of our government through the NSA is eavesdropping on phone calls with out a warrant. This despite the fact that a special court was created specifically to obtain warrants for this kind of situation. There is even a stipulation that a warrant can be obtained through this court after the fact. As we have seen over and over, though, this Executive views our judicial system with contempt.

Then, last week, we learned that the NSA is compiling a data base of every phone call made in America which records the originating phone number and the phone number being called. The Executive says that this is not "trolling" or "Data mining." Isn't the fact that they are seeking to log EVERY phone call in the nation, by definition, trolling? Isn't extrapolating whatever useful information they could get from this information mining? And how is knowing that I called my Mother on Mother's day going to help the Executive track down terrorists? I know I don't want anyone to have a list of every call I make, no matter how they use it, if I don't know it's happening and don't have a say in it. Again, the Executive did this without obtaining a warrant. The White House says they are not breaking the law, but, as they have also shown again and again, they hold the law in contempt too.

Now the Executive is talking about militarizing the border by placing thousands of national guard troops there. This is the same National Guard that is stretched to the breaking point by the war in Iraq. Its the same National Guard that has had to deal with back to back year long deployments. Is this really what we want? Do we really want to treat Mexico as an enemy? Is putting thousands of men with guns on our boarder the only way to deal with illegal immigration? Are we going to have a Checkpoint Charley at the boarder crossing in San Diego? What is happening in America?

Now, before my comments are filled with flames, I realize that things really are different than they were before 9/11. I realize that precautions must be taken to prevent sadistic and determined people from inflicting another 9/11 on the nation. I realize that some solution to illegal immigration must be reached. But what use is it to protect the nation if in protecting us the very core beliefs of our society are altered? Like it or not that is what is happening folks. Those rights that are supposedly so unalienable appear to be alienable after all. If we radically alter our society out of fear because of 9/11, aren't we doing exactly what the 9/11 sadists intended? I just hope that I will live to see this era of fear and internal division subside and America return to its most prized beliefs.

Flight 93

2006-05-01T15:11:00.000-06:00

I wont be seeing Universal’s new film Flight 93, at least not in the near future. To start with, I feel it is too soon to make a truly historical account of the events of 9/11. There is no way, five years out, for an objective account. The emotions, at least for me, are still too raw. The convulsions of change that took place in this country as a result of 9/11 are still happening and will continue to shake out for the next few years if not decades. Perhaps the film makers are not trying to make a “historical” film, but obviously they are making a film that is on a different level than a film such as Titanic who’s only purpose was to entertain.

Flight 93 offers an interpretation of the events of 9/11. An interpretation that, like it or not, will be seen by many as definitive. The fictional depiction of what occurred on board Flight 93 will become a kind of truth, just as the fictional depiction of Mozart’s life in the film Amadeus has become a kind of truth. There is no way really of knowing what really occurred on Flight 93 because everyone who has first hand knowledge is dead. All we have are cell phone calls and radio transmissions. I am not doubting the heroics of the crew and passengers of Flight 93, or that events did not unfold as has been widely accepted as a result of investigation. I am simply saying that the information available is so scarce that most of what is put onto the screen has to be supposition.

Despite the fact that the families assisted in the making of the film I still fell that, in some way, the film is exploiting a tragic event to make money. There will be people who will get rich or richer off of this film. As far as I know the profits from the movie are not being donated to any charitable cause. This of course is nothing new and in and of itself its not necessarily bad. Hollywood has exploited tragedy for profit from its very beginning. It does seem, though, that the exploitation of tragic events has risen to such a cynical level that every tragic death or catastrophe of moderate importance must be dramatized, and if there is no real disaster to make a movie about, Hollywood makes its own.

Finally, a movie like Flight 93 boils the lives of those who lost their lives down to the last three, terror filled, hours of their existence. Although what happened on Flight 93 was obviously the most harrowing, and terrifying experience of their lives, is it the event that defines their lives? Likely not. But nobody is going to make a movie about the normal everyday life of a father, mother, son, daughter, husband or wife. It just seems a shame to define a life by one terrible event. This is the reason why I didn’t see the Passion of Christ. The message of love preached by Christ is lost when the only focus is on his torture and death.

I am, no doubt, overreacting. The movie has come out now and has been universally applauded by critics. Even the critics who felt the same way I do have softened their stance so as a result I have softened mine. It’s just a movie after all. But for me, at this time, I have no desire to see the fear and death of innocent people. Even if those people died heroically.

Red Haired Girl

2006-04-27T16:37:00.000-06:00

Every morning of high school I got up at 5:30 in the morning to go to a formal scripture study class called seminary. Mostly I resented having to go, and didn’t get a lot out of it, but I had worked out a deal with my parents that I could take the car to school if I went to seminary, so every morning there I was.

There was also a pretty girl with red hair there, sitting on the second row over near the corner. She was so quiet that no one paid much attention to her. I was loud and obnoxious then, so our temperaments didn’t exactly put us in the same orbit. Still she was as much a part of the landscape of my high school years as anything else. I have thought about her often over the years. She had the same name as an Elvis Costello song and every time it played I would wonder what became of her.

In a telephone call with my mother a couple of weeks ago she mentioned almost in passing that this girl had passed away suddenly. No one knew what had happened, just that the family wasn’t talking about it. That could only mean that, whatever happened, it was not something that would be approved of in the conservative church of my birth. I did some investigation and found out that she had died of a drug overdose. Nobody knew if it was on purpose or an accident. Apparently she had a long history of drug abuse. Her husband had even left her and got custody of the kids because she couldn’t get clean.

I have had a hard time getting my mind around the whole thing. The image of the person sitting on the front row, and the person that died, seem to be diametrically opposed to each other. I never would have thought it could happen to her. I wondered, what happened in the years since high school? What whet wrong? Was the quiet pretty girl I knew already unhappy when I knew her?

Learning of her death affected me much more emotionally than I expected. I haven’t spoken to her since graduation almost sixteen years ago. I’ve realized I must have harbored a crush on her all those years ago. As ridiculous as it is, I’ve even asked myself if maybe I should have paid more attention to her and that may have had some effect. Mostly her death got me thinking again about mortality, and the permanence of death. Now that I am effectively an agnostic death means something completely different than it did when I had faith. There is no second chance, no continuation. Whatever happens for good or ill ends at the end of life. That is a sobering thought.

THESIS!!!

2006-04-08T00:21:00.000-06:00

I FINALLY finished a draft of my thesis! My God! I never worked this hard when I was a playwright! I've been laying the groundwork for the research the whole time I have been in graduate school. As much as I could, I tried to write my term papers in such a way that I could fold them into the final thesis. I also did a lot of reading to build the literature review section. Then there was the research proposal in several drafts. I turned that into the human subjects review board last summer to get the research approved. After modifying the proposal again it was finally approved in October. Then came the blackness last winter I wrote about in one of my posts when I was running on fumes and doing the bear minimum to get by so no work on my thesis for about three months. I started recruiting subjects followed by two months of interviews some of them as far as 150 miles away. Then... finally... in February I was able to start writing.

I don't know if playwriting just came easier or what, but I seriously sat at my computer for twelve hours a day for a month when I was not working. It's actually been a pleasant process. Until March 1st when I realized, oh crap! I have to have a draft of this thing before April first. So I fished up my interviews. Listened to the whole lot of them again. That amounted to about twelve hours or more. Took extensive notes. And then just plunged in.

I'm wrote about the experiences of gay and lesbian couples and singles who have adopted. I expected to hear about a lot of bigotry and prejudice but I was actually surprised at how positive the experience was for all of the people I interviewed. I’m sure a lot of it had to do with the fact that I live in California where things are not perfect but easier for gay families. It renewed my faith in humanity to hear their stories though. Here were these wonderful, fully functioning, gay families living like regular people in regular neighborhoods. Just like they should. BECAUSE THEY ARE REGULAR PEOPLE!

So that mountain is over. Well for now. I’m sure I will have to come back to it after my advisor and the thesis committee have a go at it. But the bulk, I hope is done. I just finished interviewing for the internship I will have this summer. I'm going to either be working in a family support center attached to the cancer hospital at one of the major teaching hospitals here or working with children in a children’s hospital. I’m hoping for the children’s hospital. Not because I am hankering to see children sick and dying but because I want the crisis management experience. If I work at the cancer hospital I will be doing therapy and groups as I have been doing. That is definitely a BIG mountain to get over. But once over then I can get a job and hopefully fall into a routine I can live with.

Man Shoots Friend

2006-02-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

This whole thing with Cheney blowing away his best friend has really gotten under my skin (no pun intended). Not that I think it wasn’t an accident. When I was a teenager my cousin was wounded in an almost identical hunting accident. What irritates me is how the Vice President handled the affair. To me the whole thing is a metaphor for this Vice President’s arrogance, secrecy, and his contempt for the American people.

To begin with, Mr. Cheney did not have the “stamp” needed to legally hunt quail, so he was essentially breaking the law, a small infraction yes, but illegal none-the-less. I mean, how hard can it be for a man like the President’s puppet master to get one of his lackeys to pick up a stamp?

Next, after the accident, instead of making public the fact that the second most powerful man in the world had shot his friend in an accident, he flew home to D.C. and said nothing. If it had not been for the owner of the ranch were the incident occurred calling the local paper to tell them of the accident, we may never have even known it had occurred.

Then, as the incident unfolded, Scott McClellan, White House Spokesman, treated all questions about the shooting with his typical smug condescension stating that the press was wasting their time on a minor incident and that he and the White House were “moving on.” He did this knowing that the vice president’s friend had suffered a minor heart attack and had been moved back into I.C.U.

Finally, when Cheney realized the story was not going to die, he gave audience only to Fox, the media outlet guaranteed to soft peddle the whole thing.

Here’s the rub. When I hunted in my younger days I took the time to obtain a license. If I had been caught without a license I would have been severely fined if not arrested. Is anything going to happen to Cheney? Probably not. When my cousin was accidentally shot there was a sheriff’s incident report. Was there any law enforcement involvement with Cheney? No. In my cousin’s case, both the shooter and shootee had their blood alcohol level taken. Did Cheney or his buddy have their blood alcohol taken? I would bet not. So the whole thing seems to me typical of the Vice President and this administration’s attitude. They are above the law. They answer to nobody. What applies to everyone else does not apply to them.

I don’t know, maybe I am overreacting. But before someone says that this is just the liberals getting their undies in a bundle over nothing lets remember that the republicans spent 21 million dollars investigating a blow job..

The Seventh Seal

2006-02-14T17:10:00.000-07:00

I recently watched Ingmar Bergman’s cinema classic The Seventh Seal. The movie was a Netflix DVD that has been sitting on my shelf unwatched since last spring. In the film, a knight and his squire return from the crusades to find their country ravaged by the plague. As they travel, Death, in the form of a hooded man dressed in black, comes for the knight. The knight manages to buy time by challenging death to a game of chess.

The Movie is a highly stylized meditation on life, death, and the existence of God. Death is unfeeling, coming not only for the knight, but also a poor member of an itinerant acting troop. God is, if he is there at all, distant. At one point in the movie, the knight and his companion come across a group of soldiers making ready to burn a young girl accused of being a witch. The knight looks into her face thinking that he will see God reflected in the eyes of someone so close to death. Instead he finds only terror. The knight’s reaction is to simply move on until death finally catches up with him. What else can he do?

I related to the movie. I’ve been thinking a lot in the past year about the existence, or lack of existence, of God and what that does or does not mean. I’m agnostic. I’d be an atheist but I simply don’t have the stomach for it. When I was feeling so dark last fall, I talked to God. Not in the way I used to when I was a person of faith but I talked nonetheless. I guess that proves that there really are no atheists in foxholes-or in dark days in my case. I hate the feeling that I get when I think that there really is nothing after this, and life is simply what it is. Nothing more nothing less. But when I think about it I know that its likely the truth. The world made more sense when everything in it was defined by a religious belief.

I see no practical use to taking that final step into complete atheism and so I do nothing. I go to church with S. and little Z. but other than that I don’t consider myself religious. In the case of faith, however, I’m finding that when you do nothing you slide slowly toward atheism. Faith takes a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. It has to be tended like a garden. More on this later…

Through the Dark

2006-01-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

Well here is the thing. It’s been months and months since my last posting. I’m sure that by now any regular visitors have long since bailed. I’ve considered just taking the entire blog down but then looked back over some of my previous posts and decided that the whole thing was cathartic and did help get the gears moving.

The reason for my long absence... First, I had a horrendously busy summer. I did my first internship at a family preservation agency doing 500 hours in three months working 9 hours a day and then going to school 12 hours one day a week. I loved the internship, for the most part. I worked almost entirely with children who were involved with the Department of Children and Family Services either having been witness to, or victims of domestic violence. It was intense, monotonous, frustrating and rewarding all at the same time. I made it through the summer purely by force of will telling myself that when the summer was over the pace of things would slow down and I would be able to catch my breath.

That was not the case. After the internship I was hired by the same agency to work part time. I continued doing counseling, but I also started doing home visits. This meant that I was visiting children in their homes to make sure that their environment was safe and they were being adequately cared for. It was much more stressful because I was no longer a student doing an internship, now I was an employee. My first home visit clients were both hard cases which stretched me to the limit of my ability. On top of this I was also taking two classes which meant a two hour drive to Long Beach twice a week.

In addition, S. quit her job last year teaching high school to work for a hospital school teaching kids who were too sick to go to regular school. Although she enjoyed not having to teach 210 students, the job meant a significant loss of income.

But the real reason I have not written in eight months is that, last fall, with all the pressure and stress, I had a bout of depression. No other way to describe it. I hesitate to write anything about it here because so many blogs are just accounts of people’s private hell of depression and, although I am a mental health worker, they bore me. I think it has to do with what social workers call “compassion fatigue” where a person in the helping professions simply becomes overwhelmed by the magnitude of suffering in the world and just sort of shuts down. This is definitely what happened to me. Hurricain Katrina came and went without me being able to pay much attention because when I did I just felt like I was standing on a cliff on the edge of an abyss. I started to really question if I was going to be able to handle the ins and outs of being a social worker.

I got through it, although I still feel like my emotions are raw. I realize that everyone has dark days like this in life. Some are more prone to them than others. I just hope that my small light will help push back someone else’s darkness. I don’t harbor any more delusions of greatness any longer. I just want to make individual lives better. If I can. I have to say, I don’t know what I would do without the warmth and love of S. and little Z. It just takes the kindness and support of one person to make things better. I have eight more months of my program and then I will be able to get a job that pays a steady salary and hopefully things will start to coast a little. This is enough for now. Maybe for a while. I’ll see…

One Down, One (and change) To Go

2005-05-14T17:59:00.000-06:00

Today I took two finals, and in so doing, completed the first year of my Masters of Social Work! Just one more year (and some change) to go. I have to say, I have not for one moment seriously regretted leaving my job in the theater, actually in adjunct to theater, and starting down this path.
It has been a hard year. I don’t care what my mom says, this MSW program is MUCH harder than my MFA program. There have been times, especially this semester, where I have felt so overwhelmed that I have wished I could just quit. In this program, I cant show up to class and say “I just didn’t feel inspired this week, so I don’t have any pages.” Maybe its just that creative work came much more easily to me than purely academic work. Maybe, though, its as I suspect, that programs in the arts are more about extracting money from the student than making good artists. After all, how do you teach someone to be a good writer or painter or dancer? You can teach them technique, you can lead them to the art of other great artists, but there really is something about art that comes from within and either you have it or you don’t.
Now don’t get me wrong. I loved my MFA program. I had so many opportunities. I got to meet the likes of Spaulding Grey, Paula Vogel and John Guare. I wrote two plays that I am very proud of and even had the opportunity to see one of them produced. But plays don’t put bread on the table… unless you are extremely lucky. I realized that to make a career in theater I would either need to get a Ph.D., a big roll of the dice, or hit it big, an even bigger roll of the dice. I also realized that as much as I loved the theater I did not like the arrogant, self-important people I often encountered there. Finally, I didn’t feel that I was doing the world much good only devoting myself to the theater. I wanted to take a more active roll. I wanted to get in the trenches. I just hope that, once there, I can continue to be an artist in some significant way. I would hate to leave it so far behind that baby Z. will be surprised when she discovers that I used to write plays.
That being said, I have also been nearly overwhelmed by despair several times this year. The problems of the world and this country, the richest country in the world, are so overwhelming that I feel a little like the man trying to empty the ocean with an eyedropper. There is so much meanness, so much hatred, so much poverty, so much death, so much apathy. I often wonder if I am going to be able to handle it. Ill have my first test this summer starting on Monday.
I’m doing my first internship at a family services clinic near downtown. Ill have six clients I council as well as running a group of some kind. What am I going to tell these people? Who am I to tell them anything? It’s my first real test. The first time I see if I am really cut out for social work.

Jeanne Kéfer

2005-04-16T19:40:00.000-06:00

I encountered the painting Jeanne Kéfer by Fernand Khnopff (pictured above) on a recent visit to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She was standing quietly and unobtrusively to the side of one of the galleries. Unlike some of the other paintings I saw that day which cried out from the gallery doorway to be look at, she simply waited to be noticed. When I finally did notice her, she fixed me with her gaze and held it.

As I studied her, I was amazed at the similarities between she and the painting Hands Resist Him by Bill Stoneham, which I wrote about here on October 28, 2004. In both paintings, a small child is standing before a closed front door in which reflective glass panes are set. In both paintings the child meets the viewer’s gaze directly but not aggressively. Both children seem small, innocent, and vulnerable, but, on the same token, there is a strong emotional power that comes from the paintings. Jeanne Kéfer, though, lacks the sense of menace that permeates Hands resist him. I believe this is mainly due to the quality of light in the painting. While the light in “Hands” is harsh and bright, washing out the subject’s fetures, Jeanne Kéfer’s light is soft and cool. Jeanne Kéfer also lacks the overt symbolism of “Hands” with its eyeless, nearly life-size, doll and the sliver of moon reflected in the panes of glass, behind which small hands are visible. Still, for me Jeanne Kéfer has the same gut level power that “Hands” has. Who is this little girl standing so solemnly before the observer? What are her thoughts? What is behind the door she stands in front of?

When I got home from the Getty I looked up Fernand Khnopff and was not surprised to find that he was a symbolist. I have included a link showing some of his other paintings.
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/art/khnopff.html
I assume that because Jeanne Kéfer was a commission, it lacks the stronger symbolism of some of his other work. It is still, however, a highly charged painting. There is mystery here.

Jeanne Kéfer sticks in your mind. I’ve been thinking about her again and again since my visit to the Getty. I’ve gone to the Getty’s web site (http://www.getty.edu/museum/) several times to look at the painting again. Jeanne Kéfer the person is a little girl who has grown, lived her entire existence, and died. So has Fernand Khnopff, the man who painted her. Yet, there she is, a little girl, standing forever front of the door to her house, peering gravely out into the world. I can go and find her any time I wish hanging in a gallery in the Getty. There she will probably be long after I have lived my entire life and died.

On the Up and Up

2005-04-14T13:24:00.000-06:00

I let S. in on this blog. I know that, in the past, she has felt I don’t let her in on my creative processes (of which there have been woefully few in the past years) so it didn’t seem right to keep its existence a secret. Although I definitely think that there need to be boundaries in any relationship, including marriage, those boundaries should not be bound up in secrecy. Yesterday I brought up the blog, called her over, and let her sit down and read. I’ve never written anything here that I would not share with S. anyway so the blog’s secrecy was more a psychological space than a real one. Nothing in my life is more important than S. and little Z. So while the blog will still be a place for my publicly private thoughts, S. is welcome to look at them any time she wants. She is the love of my life.

Once More Into the Breach

2005-04-06T10:45:00.000-06:00

I’m back from the breach! I have no real reason for neglecting my blog except to say that part of me has been in a protracted period of mourning over the Presidential election which I am finally coming to terms with. The whole thing has made me pretty cynical about the political process. More on that later…
I’ve also been in a period of change in my personal life. I finally quit my job as an executive assistant (nice title for secretary). I had planned to stay until my intern hours start this fall but realized that, other than the money, there was no reason at all to stay. The job had become a drudgery, I disliked my boss, and the job was sucking the creative life out of me. So, I decided to spend the last few months before my intern hours start with little baby Z. I have not for one moment seriously regretted the decision. Z is the light of my life and growing up so fast. I love our days together and the adventures we have. I’ll be sad when it comes to an end.
I had been debating whether I should take my blog down, or just let it fade into the internet ocean. I felt pretty apathetic about continuing to write. Then I typed in “pirate aggro blog” into Google and found my blog quoted at length in another woman’s blog. Ive added a link to her blog here:

http://confessionalpoet.typepad.com/grand_mental_station/

I hope she doesn’t mind. It’s a good one. I spent a good hour there last night. It was very gratifying to know that somebody out there reads me. So here I am again.

Demon

2004-12-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

I am trying my hand at very short stories.

John saw the demon one morning while getting ready for work. He had risen early while the rest of the house slept, and started the shower over the tub. As the bathroom became close with billowing clouds of steam, he undressed, lathered his face with shaving cream, and put a new blade in his razor. For a moment, he thought he caught the slightest whiff of sulfur and wondered if something might be going wrong with the pipes in the old house. It was just then, while drawing the razor down his cheek, that he glimpsed it clinging with long bony fingers to the bar holding the shower curtain. Its long naked tail hung limply in front of the curtain. John started so violently that a small welt of blood sprang up beneath the razor. At this the demon’s face split into a leering grin filled with short pointed teeth. With one swift movement, it slid behind the curtain and landed in the tub with a wet thud. John jerked the curtain aside but the tub was empty. The only sound was the hiss of the shower and the hollow gurgling of water as it spun down the drain.

Z!

2004-12-15T18:09:00.000-07:00

Little Z. split the inside of her lip last night on the bar of her crib last night. I was babysitting Z. and a friends baby, both the same age, both crying, so it took me a minute to notice. I looked over at her and she had blood streaming from her mouth down onto her pajamas. It’s hard to describe how that arrested my heart. I rushed over and picked her up and took her over into the light. By this time she was hysterical and choking and sputtering on her blood. At first I thought she had knocked out her front tooth and I felt TERRIBLE knowing this would mean no front tooth until grade school. After she calmed down a little, and after her mother got home to help me hold her arms down for a close inspection, the wound proved to be superficial.
All day today, though, I have been thinking about that first visceral reaction to seeing my little baby girl covered in blood. The twisting in my chest. The half panic. I am empathically connected to Z. in a way that I have never experienced before in my life with any other person. Not to my parents or my sisters who I love. Not to S. whom I, of course, love with all my heart. I think this is because she is MY little girl, my flesh and blood and somehow that makes things different.
In many ways, I experience the world now through Z. I want to laugh when I hear her laugh. When she cries, because she is hurt or genuinely feels bad, I want to cry. No one has ever shown the same enthusiasm for my homecomings than Z. does. I am comforted by her presence in our little home even on the worst days. I think about how this life will be for her and I am simultaneously excited and scared for her. My decision to get a Masters in social work and wanting to make the world a better place is driven by thoughts of her and the world I will leave her.
Some day Z. will not adore me so much. Some day she will grow up and have her own life. But for now I am just so happy that she is my little girl and that I can be the one to give her her first look at the world.

ESCAPE!

2004-12-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

I am escaping. The plans are set. It is too late to turn back. All I can do now let fate carry me along. After working as an executive assistant for the past three years at a major university, I am quitting my job. I walked into my boss’s office and handed her my letter of resignation, and now things are in motion.
It’s been a pretty good job as far as jobs go. Decent pay, excellent benefits, not very demanding, but it is not what I set out to do for a living. When I took the job, I had planned on only staying a year until I could find a job teaching theatre somewhere. That proved to be harder than I had expected. Then my attitude changed and I got tunnel vision and just plodded along from day to day. With my new boss, the job stopped being fun, stopped being a challenge. I was no longer a professional; I was just the hired help. I had to be subject to her whims and moods. Finally I realized I was staying because it was easy, and although I didn’t like it, the job was familiar. It wasn’t worth it for a job that did not further my professional goals in any way.
My immediate plan is to take care of little Z. during the day, and go to school at night. Next summer I start my intern hours, I have to do a thousand of them, so this is my last chance for a little while to focus on my little girl. I have to say I’m a little scared. I’ve never spent that much time with Z. Will I be able to pull it off? I look at her now and I see the a little human being emerging. A little human being I am responsible for.
I’m also scared because I have set my course on such a different trajectory than the one I have prepared for my whole life. I no longer plan to spend a life in the theater. I’m going to be a social worker. Hopefully I will find ways to incorporate theater into my life and practice. Hopefully I will always find a way to keep writing. At any rate, the wheels are in motion and soon I will be on the other side of the wall, for better or for worse.

News Fast

2004-11-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

I am on a news fast. This means that since the election I have actively avoided any and all forms of the news media. We canceled the newspaper. I don’t watch the news on T.V. I stopped listening to NPR and I don’t go near the Op Ed pages I used to troll before my fast began.

It’s amazing how much chaff has made it through though despite a concerted effort to completely ignore the news media. Our society is permeated by it. The television, radio, and Internet are only the beginning. It’s on the monitor above the teller at my bank. It’s on the little screen in the gas pump at the filling station. It’s on the huge screen advertising the O.C. on the way to school. Trying to avoid the news is like trying to cut wheat out of your diet. It can be done, but it aint easy.

People become agitated when they learn that I am on news fast. They seem compelled to blurt out tidbits of news while anxiously wringing their hands their hands and shifting from foot to foot. These are just a few of the things I learned this way though I have made it widely known that I DO NOT want to know.

I know Bush has been gloating over his victory and talking about spending political “capital”.

I know there has been an attack on insurgent strongholds in Iraq and that scores of Americans have died.

I know that key members of the cabinet have left.

I know Arafat is dead.

People tell me these things as if they are saying something that is painful to hear but must be said for my own good, like, my clothes are woefully mismatched, or my fly is open. It reminds me of Niel Postman’s book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death" in which he posits that the American soul is rotting from the inside out because of our addiction to meaningless information, information that has no bearing on our lives. People think for example that crime is rampant when in fact crime has been on the decline since the 70’s. We believe that we must blindly accept what our government tells us because American soldiers have been deployed and to do differently would be un-American. All of these things are spoon-fed to us in little 30 second and minute long bites and we believe them.

While I am sure at some point I will rejoin the world of the informed, I am happy now to be as ignorant as people will let me. The considerable amount of time I spend sitting in traffic is now filled with audio books. I’ve listened to Eudora Welty, John Updike, and Raymond Carver. I’m doing just fine becoming sad, enraged and happy over the doings of fictitious characters as I used to get over the news and talk radio. I get all the same emotional bang without the damage to my soul that the news brings.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140094385/103-3929675-3780605?v=glance

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Bush Style)

2004-11-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

There is a scene in the classic slasher Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973 version) where a hapless teen, exploring a strange house, misses a step and stumbles into a dim red room. Before he can recover his feet, Leatherface bashes him on the head with a mallet, drags his twitching body the rest of the way into the room, and slams a sliding steel door on the scene. Although the movie’s title leads the viewer to believe that mayhem will figure strongly into the plot, this bit of violence is so sudden and over so quickly that it is very disturbing and unsettling.
I had a similar feeling on November 3rd when John Kerry conceded the election to Bush. Another Texan, we’ll call him Smirkface, bashed the progressives over the head with a metaphorical mallet, drug them twitching into a room and slammed the door. It was over so fast I went around all the next day with a feeling or unreality. Although I had fully prepared myself for the likelihood that Bush would win, I had never prepared myself for Bush to win a decisive victory so quickly. I imagined things would go pretty much as they had in 2000 with days of legal wrangling followed by an appointment by the Supreme Court or Congress. At the very least I thought it would take several days to count the ballots. To make things worse, Republicans increased their majority in the Senate to five seats, meaning that Bush’s nutty agenda, not to mention appointments to the Supreme Court, will sail through unobstructed.
I received an e-mail from a friend on the 3rd that said, “#%*! I am depressed. What now?” What now indeed. The progressive movement has put so much effort into defeating W. that now they are at a total loss. For me I am opting for internal exile. For a while at least, I am going to retreat into my own little world. I am canceling the paper and switching off NPR and Pacifica radio. You will watch Fox News with me only after you have pried the remote from my cold dead hand. I am joining a book on tape club and spending the time I previously spent cursing W. and his ilk, listening to trashy books. I am going to spend time with my wife and little Z. I’m going to do my homework. I am not going to get excited over things I have no control over.
I still plan to work to make others lives better, but I have lost the belief I once had that anything can be accomplished politically. Politics is the domain of the rich and the religious zealots. Trying to get involved is like trying to take a raw steak away from a pack of wild dogs. Anything that happens needs to happen on a personal level. In the mean time though, I plan to keep my head down and ignore the little man from Texas running this country.

The Hands Resist Him

2004-10-28T16:57:00.000-06:00

This is the famed haunted painting from e-bay. The seller found the painting abandoned behind an old brewery. He took it home and, for God knows what reason, hung the painting in his 4-year-old’s room. One day his child reported that the children in the painting had been fighting and were keeping her up. Later he claimed to capture a photograph of the little boy outside of the painting. The starting bid price for the painting was something like $60 and it ultimately sold for more than $1000 so perhaps the whole haunted painting bit was just a way to drive the price up. At any rate, the number of “haunted paintings” on e-bay has proliferated including a skeleton hand inexplicably reaching to grab a quail the last time I checked.

I have, however, become obsessed with the painting. I set it as my wallpaper on my computer, contrary to warnings not to do so, and have spent a lot of time looking at it and making everyone I know look at it. The title of the painting is The Hands Resist Him and it was painted in 1972 by an artist named Bill Stoneham. If you’re interested you can visit his website at, http://www.stonehamstudios.com/default.htm

Whether it’s the harsh dream like light, the child’s direct and emotionless gaze, the eyeless doll holding some strange object, or the hands behind the window of the door, something about the painting touches people on a deep level. It’s the kind of painting that compels you to look at it and study it. In my book this means it has succeeded as art, even if it is not the kind of thing you would hang in your house, although I probably would.

On a sort of related matter, baby Z. has been doing something slightly spooky lately. About a month ago I woke from a sound sleep at 2:18 am. The apartment was completely silent. As is my custom when I wake in the night, I went to check on Z. in her crib. The apartment was dark so I felt my way along to her room. When I reached her crib I felt inside and she wasn’t there! My heart stopped for a moment and then I felt her little foot and followed it up to where she was sitting quietly and wide awake in the far corner of her crib. For some reason a chill ran up my spine when I thought of my little girl sitting in the dark wide awake.

Since then, this has happened about three times, always around 2:18 am. Once I was even awakened by a short laugh from Z. The incidents are just creepy enough that I usually take Z. back to bed with me where she promptly falls asleep and stays that way until we get up. My logical brain tells me that there is no such thing as spirits or ghosts but my imaginative side can easily run wild. I imagine Z. sitting up in bed and chatting happily with friendly spirits. I have always been this way. When the movie The Shining came out when I was a little boy, just the trailer was enough to give me nightmares for weeks.

I secretly wish there were ghosts. It would make life much more interesting. It would also mean that when the people we love the most go away. They are not really gone.

GOOD

2004-10-19T17:57:00.000-06:00

My friend Ryan and I have an ongoing argument in which he tells me that there is no such thing as an unselfish act. Every action that we take as human beings is done in some way for our own selfish benefit. Even altruism, he says, is done to gain the praise of others. He takes this argument further by saying that the very ideas of good and evil (for lack of better words) are constructs of humanity and are entirely subjective.

I take a slightly less cynical and reductive point of view. Just as humanity is capable of great “evil”, I also believe we are capable of great “good” without the hope of benefit or reward. The events of September 11th 2001 made it clear to me that there is something indefinable, destructive, and “evil” within humanity that cannot be easily explained away. Conversely there is within humanity the ability to do “good” without benefit to the individual such as those who risked their lives to hide Jewish families from the Nazis.

So, what drives people to be “good”? What is good for that matter? Who decides? I agree with Ryan that most of our ideas of right and wrong, moral and immoral, good and evil, are constructs of our own making. But does it really matter? Isn’t an act of kindness, an act of help, an act of “good”, always a good thing?

Different things motivate different people. On the most basic level, there is the desire to fulfill selfish needs. Then there are those who do “good” because they fear God. Then there are those who do “good” because of a genuine and internalized faith. Finally there are those who do “good” simply because it is the right thing to do.

A few years ago I read Albert Camus’ book The Plague about the quarantine of a French Colonial town in Africa during a modern outbreak of the plague. One of the characters in the book spends most of the first half of the story trying to bribe his way out of the city. He is a stranger in the town, has no friends there, and his family lives elsewhere. When the opportunity finally presents itself for escape, he suddenly decides to stay for no other reason than it is the “right” thing to do. He sees an opportunity to help his fellow human beings and he takes it. This is the kind of “good” person I hope I can eventually become. A person who does “good” for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.

Loosing My Religion

2004-10-11T17:46:00.000-06:00

I am an atheist-leaning agnostic. I haven’t always been. I went through a period about 13 years ago where I was as close to a religious fanatic as my nature would allow. My faith was strong enough once that its absence now is somewhat uncomfortable. Like a newly missing tooth, I am almost constantly reminded of what was once there. This has not stopped me from practicing my religion, well… religiously. In fact I am the assistant to our Bishop. My practice, however, has no personal meaning consists of going through the motions.
I believed once in a loving God, a father who was in charge and watched over things benevolently. Through the years I have become more and more aware of the general chaos and injustice of the world and the incredible amount of suffering that occurs. First I became angry and then disgusted at a God that could allow his children to suffer the way they do, no matter what the reason. In my eyes, there is just no excuse for it, though, I admit I lack the insight that viewing the entire universe at one time would afford. One of the things that always irritates me about religion is the contortions it goes through to explain chaos and suffering. People say, “Nothing happens without a reason.” “This is all to teach us something.” “God has to let evil people be evil.” It drives me crazy.
For me it comes down to one of three things. One, God is loving, but powerless, in which case, what good is he to us? Two, God is omnipotent but mean, or worse yet indifferent. In which case, what can we do about it? Three, there is no God. Logic pointed me in the direction of no God.
I was raised as a Christian, believing that Christ was the Son of God. I also belong to a denomination that believes it is the ONLY truth. As the years went on I realized other Christians believed just as strongly that they were the ONLY truth. How could it be? I also realized that Muslims believe their truth to be the ONLY truth and Jews believe their truth to be the ONLY truth. So who is right? The subject is further complicated by the fact that any behavior can be justified by religion from killing children at a middle school in Russia, to bombing neighborhoods in Iraq. First my belief in my denomination fell away. Then my belief in any denomination fell away. Now I’m stranded.
This posting turned out to be much more negative than I intended. I started it more than a week ago and it sort of sent me into a tailspin for a couple of days. I have much more to say. As I’ve said before. Religion is something I think about all the time.

Way Off Target

2004-09-28T18:15:00.000-06:00

On my way into work today I heard a report on NPR about how Target Corporation has decided not to allow Salvation Army bell ringers and kettles in front of their stores this holiday season. According to the report, the Salvation Army collected 9 million dollars last year outside of Target stores alone. Unless they can find an alternative revenue stream, Target has essentially cut 9 million dollars of goods and services provided by the Salvation Army to poor families by banning the bell ringers. Happy holidays!
Target defends their action by saying they are simply being consistent with their no solicitation policy. K-Mart and Wal-Mart, however, both have no solicitation policies but make an exception each holiday season for the Salvation Army. Target further supports their position by sighting their record of corporate giving. While commendable, this money is given more for public relations than a desire to do good in the community, while the Salvation Army exists solely for the purpose of aiding those in need.
The reason for Target’s bell ringer prohibition, then, is most likely the perception that bell ringers tarnish the hip and slick image of their brand. The retail chain is banning this staple of the holiday season despite the fact that in 2003 they posted $1,845 million in profits for the holiday season last year, up 15% from the same time the year before. It is highly unlikely the Salvation Army is cramping Target’s style.
A letter to Target Corporation CEO Robert J. Ulrich follows this posting. If you would like to send Mr. Ulrich a letter concerning this situation write to him at the following address.

Robert J. Ulrich, CEO
Target Corporation
1000 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN 55403

Dear Mr. Ulrich,

I am writing to express my disappointment that Target Corporation has decided not to allow Salvation Army kettles and bell ringers in front of its stores this Holiday season. As a result, the Salvation Army will loose up to 9 million dollars in donations they would have likely collected from patrons to your stores. This means they will be unable to provide nine million dollars in goods and services to families in need during the Holiday season. Target has cited its need to be consistent in their no solicitation policy as the reason for this prohibition. Your competitors, Wal-Mart and K-Mart, however, both have no solicitation policies but both make exceptions for the Salvation Army during the Holidays.
While I realize the Target Corporation is involved in charitable giving, it cannot make up for the money the Salvation Army will loose as a result of this action. For this reason my wife and I will be doing our Holiday shopping at other stores this year. We will also inform our friends of Target’s action towards the Salvation Army and encourage them to shop elsewhere. Finally, I will use my web log to publicize your decision and encourage readers to avoid Target this Holiday season.
Please reconsider your decision to bar the Salvation Army from Target stores.

Sincerely,

Pirate Aggro
Los Angeles, CA

I Just Might Be

2004-09-27T17:02:00.000-06:00

The outlook is bleak. I totally ignore the television and only glance at the headlines in the paper. I find myself switching off the radio because to listen is to become angry. The news is too depressing. It seems as if George W. Bush is going to actually win this election. He won’t even have to stop a recount or be declared the winner by the Supreme Court this time. He will actually be elected. The predicted ground swell of anger towards Bush’s failed policies, not to mention the socially conservative policies that are functioning very well, seems not to be materializing. Once again the left is dissipating into political infighting while the Right organize and walk in lock step towards securing the election of their nominee.
I used to think that people voted for conservative policies to protect their own monetary interests. People with money don’t want to see their money taken in the form of taxes and spend on programs for those without money. I used to feel that the reason the Right wins elections was because the people most likely to vote are not the people most likely to benefit from leftist policies. Poor people and minorities don’t vote, so their voices don’t get heard. Now I’m not so sure. There are many more poor farmers who have been lost their land because of conservative policies who vote for a conservative candidate than there are wealthy businessmen who vote conservative to protect their interests.
George W. Bush is a genuinely popular president beloved by his party faithful and liked by many, many more. If Bush gets re-elected it will be because American’s genuinely believe that he is taking this country in the right direction. His reelection will be an endorsement of his top down domestic policy favoring the very rich. His reelection will be a mandate to stay the course in his unilateral and aggressive foreign policy. America will be re-made in the neo-conservative image.
All of this makes me feel as if I am insane. To me, the Bush administration has been an unmitigated disaster for the United States. It is obvious to me not only on a political level but a moral level as well. My dislike for Bush goes much deeper than the irritation I felt for his father or Regan. I genuinely think that Bush’s policies go contrary to human decency. Yet, at least 50% of Americans think that Bush is an upstanding guy. So that leaves me to conclude that either I have let my leftist ideologies so color my view of Bush that I cant see him for the good president he is or…America has undergone some kind of ideological shift. Can over a hundred million people be wrong?

The Dew is on the (GOP) Meadow

2004-09-22T15:33:00.000-06:00

Sheri Dew, the LDS businesswoman who gave the prayer at the opening of the GOP convention, delivered a speech in February in which she compared those who support gay marriage to those who stood idly by while Hitler rose to power. Since her comments were made almost six months before the convention, I can only surmise that the GOP vetted her and knew exactly whom they were dealing with, and by default, lent their endorsement to Ms. Dew’s dehumanizing point of view. This is a letter I wrote to her regarding those comments. If and when I receive a reply, I will post it here.

Dear Ms. Dew,

I recently read a transcript of the speech you gave to the Interfaith Conference On Defending Marriage and the Family on February 28th of this year. In that speech you equated those who advocate for gay marriage with those who stood by while Hitler was taking power. To equate those who peacefully seek marriage for same sex couples to one of the worst crimes against humanity in human history is outrageous. Not only is it an insult to the millions who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis, it also dehumanizes and demonizes an entire group of people.

Who among the gay rights movement is advocating the forced deportation of a group of people based solely on their religious or ethnic background? Has your property been seized by the gay rights movement? Have you or anyone you know been put into concentration camps by advocates for same sex couples? Has your country been invaded and your government over thrown by people seeking equal treatment under the law for gays? Has the gay rights movement systematically pursued a campaign of mass murder resulting in the deaths of six million people?

I realize that your address was given to an audience of like-minded people. You, of course, have the right to oppose gay marriage based on your personally held and religious beliefs. Please remember, though, that by invoking the memory of the holocaust in this way you cheapen it’s lesson to humanity. Remember also that the people whom you so easily equate with Hitler are someone’s sons and daughters. They are human beings who have the same need for love and companionship that we all have. I would ask you to choose your words more carefully in the future.

Sincerely,

Piarate Aggro
Los Angeles, CA

Tale of Two Lackeys

2004-09-21T14:01:00.000-06:00

Because of my tendency to be addle-brained, my friends have a running joke that there is a tired, over worked, office lackey living in my head. He works in this little cramped office surrounded by computers and filing cabinets that are overflowing with paper and completely disorganized. Whenever any information needs to be retrieved from my memory, there is a desperate search among the cabinets and what comes out, if anything, is generally garbled or just plain wrong.

In actuality, there are TWO over-worked office lackeys living in my head. One is the dutiful employee who tries to do a lot with a little and wants to put in an honest days work. The other is a slouch who comes to work late and leaves early, who will let the other one do most of the work, and does the absolute minimum necessary to avoid being fired.

The first lackey is an eternal optimist and romantic. He sees the world in terms of right and wrong and thinks that people should help each other out. The other is a misanthrope who is suspicious of most people’s motives and has little to no hope that things will improve in the future.

Since starting work on my MSW these two have been battling it out in my head. One will say, “it is possible for one person to make a difference.” Then the other will say, “Bullsh**! The only people with any power to make a difference are rich people” The first will say, “There is dignity in every life. Even the worst person has a spark of humanity.” And the other will say, “You friggin’ bleeding heart! They deserve to be drug into the street and shot!”

All kidding aside, though, I do sometimes feel like two people living in the same body. I can look at a story in the LA Times about a girl in Darfur who was raped and has a little girl as a result who is cast off by her society and I will feel like crying. I want to reach into the picture in the paper and make things better. Then on the way to work somebody will cut me off and I am ready chase them down and run them off the road. Sometimes I feel like I will be able to do some good somewhere as a Social Worker to ease the suffering of others but the next moment I will feel totally overwhelmed by the sheer size and pervasiveness of our social problems in this country.

I don’t want to be a pessimist. I don’t want to dislike humanity. I am definitely on the side of the first lackey who sees the world through more rose colored glasses. I’m the boss right? I should just get rid of the other guy. But it’s easier said than done. I say “your fired!” and he just looks at me. Sometimes he even laughs.

Dinner With Spaulding Gray

2004-09-17T17:42:00.000-06:00

Back in graduate school, S. and I were invited by the then Dean to attend a dinner with Spaulding Gray, the monologist, actor, and writer. I was the only person in our program to be invited, so I saw it as quite an honor.

The whole affair was pretty low key. We sat around a table with about five to eight others, all faculty, and just chatted as if it had been a dinner party at a friends house. Unlike many of the “celebrities” I had seen breeze through the campus, Mr. Gray was very unassuming. He did not dominate the conversation and did not have the air of arrogance many famous people have.

At some point in the evening the conversation turned to religion. Spaulding Gray related a story about a time in his childhood when he had badly burnt his arm on a radiator. Being Christian Scientists, his mother would not take him to a doctor and told him that it was basically an issue of mind over matter. As a result he suffered greatly with the burn. The experience colored his attitudes toward religion for the rest of his life.

For some reason the Dean suddenly announced, “Aggro is a Mormon.” I guess he figured conversation about one slightly nutty religion logically led to conversation about another. The only reason the Dean knew I was Mormon in the first place was that we had done both parts of Angels in America the year before and I had become the sort of de-facto expert on Mormonism for the dramatists. I NEVER volunteer my religious background to anyone because the Mormon stereotype is so radically different than what I am. I was embarrassed and uncomfortable to be put in the spotlight but the whole thing led to a really interesting conversation with Mr. Gray about the gradual loss of faith to existentialism. Nothing really profound was said beyond realizing that Mr. Gray and I were very similar in temperament and philosophy.

Spaulding Gray committed suicide this past January. His family said that he had been depressed. Before they even pulled his body from the river they suspected the worst. Apparently he gotten on a ferry in New York and at some point in the crossing, simply stepped off. Who has not felt this way at some point? Who has not secretly wished to just disappear into oblivion? Who has not felt despondent at the level of suffering in the world?

Normally I don’t pay much attention to the passing of famous people. After all, I don’t know them and they have no bearing on my life. I did feel sad about Mr. Gray’s suicide though because I had made that brief and genuine connection with him. I also view his death as a kind of warning not to get swamped by my existential dread or let it overwhelm the little joys of life.

I think I'm A Nerd

2004-09-16T17:32:00.000-06:00

S. and I have been monitoring the blogg of T., my ex-grilfriend and her ex-room mate from collage. I stumbled across it several months ago, shared it with S. and we have been chuckling about it since. She does not seem to have changed a bit. T. is unemployed, she was chronically so when I knew her. She is an obsessive blogger, she was disturbingly devoted to MUDs when we were together. She married some scrawny guy named Thor, how perfect. She talks endlessly on her blogg about how she has no direction.

I forbade S. from responding to T’s bloggs. I don’t want contact with her. I have good memories about all my girlfriends and there have been a few of them. I even have good memories about my first fiancé. Even though the relationship ended disastrously, I still remember good times. I remember almost nothing about the two years I was with T. Not bad memories. No memories. The little I do remember is that she was chronically depressed, unmotivated, wouldn’t go hiking or camping when we lived in the middle of three national parks, got car sick at the drop of a hat, and hated any kind of public affection.

I realized as I thought about it that maybe I am a little bitter about the whole thing. While not wasted, I do feel that those two years could have been better spent with S. or carousing with some other girl. Then I realized that, Oh my God, I am obsessively blogging! I am existentially and professionally befuddled and often have to stave off the black dog of depression. I am radically switching gears after preparing my whole life for a life in the theater. I am just like T.! I am a nerd! So maybe the problem is that T. and I were too much like each other and drug each other down.

So now I don’t feel so bitter. I still don’t want any contact with her though.

God is Dead?

2004-09-15T16:48:00.000-06:00

I donâ€™t believe in God. At least not in any useful, quality-of-life improving, way. I used to, though. In fact I spent two years as a full time missionary about eleven years ago. I think I had a real faith. I can remember feeling differently than I do now. Little by little that has receded leaving me beached on this strange existential shore.

Ryan asked me the other day if I harbored some anger towards him because of my loss of faith. Ryan is an atheist and has been as long as I have known him, more than 17 years. Even in my most fervent periods of faith, Ryan chipped at my belief, not exactly undermining them but definitely challenging them. I realized that, yes, on some level I do resent Ryan for the philosophical changes that have taken place in me. The long talks we have had over the years about the purpose of existence and meaning have had a cumulative effect. The world was a much happier, safe, rational place when I thought a benevolent God was in charge. Wakening up to the realization that the world is really in chaos and seemingly without innate meaning has been a big jolt for me.

Really, though, I canâ€™t blame Ryan. The cracks in the dam were there all along, even on my mission. Ryan just picked at them instead of sticking his finger in to stop the flow of water. Iâ€™m sure I would have ended up here anyway. I just got here sooner than I would have had I not been influenced by Ryan.

Yetâ€¦ I still go to church each Sunday with my wife to a church I donâ€™t particularly like that has beliefs that donâ€™t even mesh with my ideas of fairness and justice. Ryan asks me all the time â€œwhy do you keep going? Why do you care so much?â€� The answer is I donâ€™t know. I say itâ€™s for S. but S. is pretty indifferent. I say itâ€™s for my little Z. but I definitely donâ€™t want her growing up with some of the ideas that my church teaches. So here it is. Another of the big issues in my life that, Iâ€™m sure, will be an ongoing subject of my posts.

Guns Guns Guns

2004-09-13T17:56:00.000-06:00

The assault weapons ban ended today. Why this law had a sun set clause in the first place I canâ€™t figure out, but the gun makers lucked out to have W. in the white house and a right wing majority in congress when the ban expired. Bill Frist said last week "I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire." Yet a recent poll showed 2/3 of the American public support the ban. The conservatives didnâ€™t even allow a vote on the issue so how can we really know what our representatives thought was in our best interest? So what majority is Frist talking about?

It is precisely this kind of behavior that has made me largely cynical about our representatives. They donâ€™t listen to their constituents, they listen to special interests, in this case the gun lobby. You would be hard pressed to explain how having military style weapons on our streets is a good idea for America. Isnâ€™t this the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq? Would we consider those societies safer?

Now I am not so rabid about guns that I believe they should be totally banned. I am a progressive that happens to believe that people should be able to own a gun if they want one. Growing up my dad owned a high-powered hunting rifle and a shotgun. I would own a gun again if I lived somewhere where it made sense (i.e. not Los Angeles) and I had some occasion to want to use it, but cant we have some common sense laws in this country regarding weapons that are manufactured for the sole purpose of killing another human being? Apparently not.

9/11 Memory

2004-09-11T09:43:00.000-06:00

Three years ago, I was lying in bed early in the morning. S. was already awake, up, and rushing around getting ready for work. I listened to her opening and closing drawers, turning the water on and off and clattering dishes as she ate breakfast. A few minutes later she came in and told me that a plane had crashed into one of the towers at the world trade center. I stumbled out into the living room and saw the image of the first tower with a dark gash high up on the building pouring black smoke. S. and I watched in silence until we saw what we thought was an explosion in the already damaged first building but what turned out to be the second plane hitting the second tower. I commented that the entire tower might need to be torn down because of the damage it had apparently sustained.

S. left then for work having no idea what was unfolding in New York and later in Washington. I was unemployed then, having just graduated from graduate school in June and not yet found a job, so I spent the entire day alone, transfixed, and watching the whole horror unfold. I watched with a sense of unreality as first one tower and then the other slid in billowing clouds of dust and smoke to the ground. Throughout the day, and over the next weeks, we would watch them fall again and again and again on Television. It was almost as if the country was trying to collectively convince itself that the towers were gone.

Then it was reported another plane had crashed into the pentagon and another had crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania. I felt a sort of creeping fear that I had to tamp down throughout the day that somehow things were coming apart at the seams. When S. came home in the afternoon I went to the store with the strange idea of getting â€œsuppliesâ€� in case the problems continued to spiral out of control. Apparently lots of others had had the same idea because the shelves were in disarray and the bottled water almost completely gone.

I called my friend Jack in New York later in the evening. Luckily, they no longer lived in New York City and had just recently moved to New Jersey. Jackâ€™s wife Shannon told me that she had watched the whole thing unfold from the window of their apartment. She said that she knew she had witnessed the deaths of thousands of people as the towers fell.

S. and I felt the need to be around other people and to pray so we drove up to the chapel on temple hill but found it closed. So we walked over to the Catholic Church whoâ€™s doors were wide open. Scores of other people were there praying and quietly talking.

The one thing I remember most clearly about that day is the deep sense of confusion and dread I felt. I could not understand how inhumane one human being could be to another. Although I had no personal connection to the 9/11 victims I did feel like something was fundamentally changed or would be fundamentally changed. I had a deep sadness and empathy for the thousands seeking their missing loved ones that went beyond the usual â€œisnâ€™t that terribleâ€� sympathy that a disaster engenders. It was my first understanding that there was real evil in the world. Not a biblical kind of evil but a basic malignant ugliness that lives within humanity. My faith in humanity was shaken.