I don't know why we are unable to come up with a new vocabulary for what is happening to us now.
I can't figure out what exactly was wrong with Reagan, Bush, Bush W. or Cheney.
Before these people got into the fabric of World Peace, the idea that World Peace was achievable did
exist, even after Vietnam. How does anyone think we got flower power once we began to settle social
unrest here in the seventies.
Or- we thought we'd begun. Now I see the Klan have all gotten jobs on police forces in this country.
Who was going to stop them?
I digress.
America had brave, forward-thinking leadership in both World Wars, and in the Korean War.
Before Reagan flaunted the Boland Ammendment, however, inventing 'plausible deniability', a thing
totally implausible and oxymoronic for a leader to engulf himself in, America did not develop the
habit of aggressing sovereign nations without being called upon to help advance a specific peace, or
defend its own sovereignty.
We surely never aggressed other nations under false pretense!
Now we are in a morass exacerbated by so very many years of grinning lies, death, torture, murder-
how in the world do we get ourselves out of this?
We are harboring and honoring so many war criminals here.
We need new Medals of Honor for the Cindy Sheehans of our nation. She was not the one killing people.
Saddam was no prince, but George W. killed more Iraqis than Saddam ever did.
We can arm any group we want in the Mid East today, and surely we must do something.
What we cannot do, however, is give them more people, well-trained professional soldier people
to behead as 'boots on foreign ground'.
There is no reason in this universe for us to believe in America that we are admired, respected, loved,
or thought honorable in Iraq, except in a slight perhaps by the Pesh Merga and the Yezidi.
Whatever group we throw in with today can easily re-group and rename themselves tomorrow.
That is exactly what they are going to do until we have no more arms to give them.
We have to get in there somehow, yet we have no choice but to be limited.
We are not the Mid East NRA.
We are not going to know the good guys with a gun from the bad guys with a gun for any foreseeably
accurately, measurable amount of time for quite some years to come- if ever.
The conflicts we have now don't have enemies who surrender, who seek out truces, who agree to an
end to hostilities. They don't feel that they were treated fairly in WWI, or that it was ever fairly
redressed with them- so we go right ahead and heap insult, after injury, after aggression right on top
of what they have to resent already. How are we supposed to find groups over there who hate each
other more than they want the freedom to hate us?
We have had the worse trouble from angering Stalin after WWII.
We are still not warm and fuzzy with France from how angry DeGaulle was after WWII.
We need to figure out how we got on so well with the British after the War of Independence. Oh, right, they still owned a lot of property here- as they do now.
How did we do it with Germany. For one thing we helped them do what they wanted; eliminate a lot
of their extremists. Neither of those solutions is workable in the Mid East as I can see.
How did we become allied with Japan? We let them buy all the patents they wanted. Don't think we
dare do that unless we could be sure we sold nothing lethal. Prohibitions of that sort are more difficult
to effect in this 21st century.
We have a stability in South Korea we got by splitting the country in only two parts.
Sociologists say five is a good number.
Instead of people thinking they are going to force caliphates all over the place, maybe they can agree
on redrawing borders which will give them five groups of land.
Fat chance on Iran ever going for that, right?
Someone had better do something.
People who used to be farmers and dentists don't go away quietly. How does anyone think England
did make the colonies so angry. The king was no longer messing with only mountain men, cobblers,
and blacksmiths.
The middle class in the Mid East are not one bit dumb. They were not so happy with us in the first place, and they know all their countries' borders were transgressed, and swollen with the miseries of
millions because George W. and his neo-con buddies do think war is a war game.
Sunni/Shia forces are not seasoned, professional, nurtured, thoughtful, organized, gentleman soldiers
with strict hierarchies and chains of command which cannot easily be broken.
They are raw.
In each form they present, they are raw.
They may want Americans there, some of them, but they all want us well-done.
Do we like that picture?
Besides, then what happens to Israel?
I hate to say it or think it; but Ebola in sub-Saharan Africa may be the only way for us to win true
friends among economies that actually are growing, despite all the problems of living in the most
unyielding expanse of climate on earth.
I know there are microbial thermophiles on the North and South Pole which can survive anything; but I don't think there are harsher seasons lasting such interminable amounts of time.
Hey, I'm not a biogeographer though. I admit it.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
What I Learned From Being Severely Beaten Repeatedly As A Child
I learned I had no home.
I learned I was welcome nowhere.
I learned I never, ever really would be.
I guess I'm OK. I'm old now.
But my kids don't have the same opinion I do of how OK I am, on a scale of 1-10.
They don't have the same opinions of how OK I have been on a scale of 1-10.
And they don't use any scale I ever even imagined in their childhoods. I couldn't manage my own
growing up scales, even as I was changing quickly every year.
I don't know exactly how I intimidated them. They may have gotten a few smacks, but some
say one whipping is enough. Kids obey a certain amount of time no matter what.
It shouldn't be necessary to intimidate them.
And you certainly won't get more obedience from giving out more hell.
You may tell yourself you are; but what you are seeing is fear, contempt.
I had that argument with my dad when he was in his sixties, even though he wasn't a bad person.
I had to cut the conversation short with him though until he was in his eighties! He was getting too
threatening in his tone even then. He had been thinking all along nothing else mattered except the
kids obey- obey the instant some command is given.
That instantaneous compliance expectation actually is a necessary instinct for parents to demand
from having lived under extremely punitive social pressures which group-identify and herd persons
rarely treated as individuals, as a matter of course. In my family, a lot of that sort of socialization came from slavery.
My own mom who could be just brutal, puzzlingly enough though, was horrified that I even cursed in front of my kids.
Well, I wasn't cursing them! I wasn't even cursing at them in my estimation. If I said, "Stop all that
damned noise!" she'd feel crushed. I suppose it's sometimes easier to identify with grand kids because
you can see how cute they are, but you are not responsible for them. I said sometimes. My dad loved
them too, but I could tell even though dad never developed the habit of cursing or swearing, that he
had more of a 'Would you kids stop that damned noise' sentiment when they were young.
So she was quite an enigma. She sure had different standards now that she had grand kids.
Here's the thing.
My grandchildren, her great grandchildren, get it worse than my children did.
That generational witnessing is what hurts so badly when it happens.
But my grandchildren do know love. As a child, I wasn't quite certain. I wondered. I thought
fate and love were all of one mix. I didn't think anyone was going to find nice ways to express
love as a way of living. I believe my own children assumed much of it rather than felt it in measures
which could have made them feel safer, and sounder, and more ready to grow inside.
They love one another, but are quite a bit more suspicious of each other than they should be.
And because their father was a troll they did grow to love- their emotional dependencies are way out
of whack, either way too extreme or hovering eternally n avoidance land.
As my children did begin to grow up, I realized such a thing as evolving love was entirely possible, and explorably wonderful. I began to do more and more of those little expressions of affection which had landed in my heart after all from both my own grandmas, and my foster mom, and to some extent my parents and godmother.
It took me so long to figure it out though.
I married someone who was the exact nightmare of a father for my children I never thought I was
capable of loving or choosing. Once he finally gone though, I guess I began to see love could grow and blossom and be happy to present itself all over the place.
The kids told me once when they were little- 'When dad was here you were so mean!'
Now if that isn't the opposite of how things are supposed to go I don't know what could be.
I have no recollection of ever being mean until he left, even all these nearly forty years later.
What I do know is that things can go from generation to generation taking on many forms- none of
them entirely recognizable from generations past, but none of them warm or inspiring from a joyous
growth point of view.
I bought a house forty years ago.
I've lived in it forty years.
I still don't feel welcome.
Feeling no welcome anywhere is instilled. I don't know if it can be uprooted.
I did have one friend who pleasantly dug at it constantly.
I know I have to keep workn' on it, too. It can make a person cantankerous. But now, I am old.
I learned I was welcome nowhere.
I learned I never, ever really would be.
I guess I'm OK. I'm old now.
But my kids don't have the same opinion I do of how OK I am, on a scale of 1-10.
They don't have the same opinions of how OK I have been on a scale of 1-10.
And they don't use any scale I ever even imagined in their childhoods. I couldn't manage my own
growing up scales, even as I was changing quickly every year.
I don't know exactly how I intimidated them. They may have gotten a few smacks, but some
say one whipping is enough. Kids obey a certain amount of time no matter what.
It shouldn't be necessary to intimidate them.
And you certainly won't get more obedience from giving out more hell.
You may tell yourself you are; but what you are seeing is fear, contempt.
I had that argument with my dad when he was in his sixties, even though he wasn't a bad person.
I had to cut the conversation short with him though until he was in his eighties! He was getting too
threatening in his tone even then. He had been thinking all along nothing else mattered except the
kids obey- obey the instant some command is given.
That instantaneous compliance expectation actually is a necessary instinct for parents to demand
from having lived under extremely punitive social pressures which group-identify and herd persons
rarely treated as individuals, as a matter of course. In my family, a lot of that sort of socialization came from slavery.
My own mom who could be just brutal, puzzlingly enough though, was horrified that I even cursed in front of my kids.
Well, I wasn't cursing them! I wasn't even cursing at them in my estimation. If I said, "Stop all that
damned noise!" she'd feel crushed. I suppose it's sometimes easier to identify with grand kids because
you can see how cute they are, but you are not responsible for them. I said sometimes. My dad loved
them too, but I could tell even though dad never developed the habit of cursing or swearing, that he
had more of a 'Would you kids stop that damned noise' sentiment when they were young.
So she was quite an enigma. She sure had different standards now that she had grand kids.
Here's the thing.
My grandchildren, her great grandchildren, get it worse than my children did.
That generational witnessing is what hurts so badly when it happens.
But my grandchildren do know love. As a child, I wasn't quite certain. I wondered. I thought
fate and love were all of one mix. I didn't think anyone was going to find nice ways to express
love as a way of living. I believe my own children assumed much of it rather than felt it in measures
which could have made them feel safer, and sounder, and more ready to grow inside.
They love one another, but are quite a bit more suspicious of each other than they should be.
And because their father was a troll they did grow to love- their emotional dependencies are way out
of whack, either way too extreme or hovering eternally n avoidance land.
As my children did begin to grow up, I realized such a thing as evolving love was entirely possible, and explorably wonderful. I began to do more and more of those little expressions of affection which had landed in my heart after all from both my own grandmas, and my foster mom, and to some extent my parents and godmother.
It took me so long to figure it out though.
I married someone who was the exact nightmare of a father for my children I never thought I was
capable of loving or choosing. Once he finally gone though, I guess I began to see love could grow and blossom and be happy to present itself all over the place.
The kids told me once when they were little- 'When dad was here you were so mean!'
Now if that isn't the opposite of how things are supposed to go I don't know what could be.
I have no recollection of ever being mean until he left, even all these nearly forty years later.
What I do know is that things can go from generation to generation taking on many forms- none of
them entirely recognizable from generations past, but none of them warm or inspiring from a joyous
growth point of view.
I bought a house forty years ago.
I've lived in it forty years.
I still don't feel welcome.
Feeling no welcome anywhere is instilled. I don't know if it can be uprooted.
I did have one friend who pleasantly dug at it constantly.
I know I have to keep workn' on it, too. It can make a person cantankerous. But now, I am old.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Before Any Woman Marries
Get a translation of the text, then listen to Dame Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti sing
'in questa reggia' from Turandot by Bellini with The London Philharmonic Orchestra...while alone.
The song is only about six minutes long; and at about four minutes and forty-five seconds, the walls
begin to ring, and you may feel every word Joan Sutherland is uttering.
She is refusing suitors marriage because the possible pitfalls for a woman are too horrific.
But, Pavorotti convinces her and everyone else everywhere, that love has to reign,and the song ebbs.
Don't worry, they do get married in the end.
But Turandot is quite an opera, and quite a tour de force for a strong voice with a very powerful story to tell the audience in 'reggia'- mainly about an auntie of the heroines.
These two performers have passed away; yet in part because of them, this opera, the songs in it, will be on music's map forever and ever.
Intensely ever after.
'in questa reggia' from Turandot by Bellini with The London Philharmonic Orchestra...while alone.
The song is only about six minutes long; and at about four minutes and forty-five seconds, the walls
begin to ring, and you may feel every word Joan Sutherland is uttering.
She is refusing suitors marriage because the possible pitfalls for a woman are too horrific.
But, Pavorotti convinces her and everyone else everywhere, that love has to reign,and the song ebbs.
Don't worry, they do get married in the end.
But Turandot is quite an opera, and quite a tour de force for a strong voice with a very powerful story to tell the audience in 'reggia'- mainly about an auntie of the heroines.
These two performers have passed away; yet in part because of them, this opera, the songs in it, will be on music's map forever and ever.
Intensely ever after.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Adrian Peterson: You Don't Realize You Are Unwell...
I have had associations with so very many social workers and child abusers in my career.
I have never ever once heard a child abuser say; 'I am a child abuser.'
However, many many times I have heard the cruel ones say point blank: 'I am not a child abuser.'
Whenever you think to call abuse, discipline, do a bit of math, even if your mom didn't.
Calculate whether or not you have a decidedly more than double weight advantage over the person
you intend to strike.
Calculate whether you might have a more than squared (x to the second power) age and life experience advantage over the person you are about to strike.
Calculate the height advantage you have over the person you will strike.
Calculate the proportional height/weight advantage you have over the person you will unleash force
upon.
That will take more time; but your weight has much more heavy muscle in it than the weight
of most other people- especially growing people.
For instance, you may weigh three pounds for every inch of height your frame supports. No four
year old could steel himself against that, physically, or probably even emotionally.
If you take the time to do that mathematics, perhaps your rage will have had some time to abate.
(I know you believe that amount of rage against someone four years old may be normal- but it is not.)
Can you now agree you clearly may have been out of control striking a four-year-old? You hit genitals. Did you make him strip, or was your force powerful enough to tear through his underwear?
Either way, Mr. Peterson, that does not indicate a good quantity of discipline in you.
If your mom is to blame for your present behavior, sir, then you haven't fully grown up.
Find someone who cares for you, and who knows how very wrong this inflicting of bodily harm is, even if you are not still on great terms with this person; then listen to what the person tells you about what you have done so wrong. Yes sir- you meant to hurt him. But you need to hear that from someone who you know cares about you.
Your son will need an education in this twenty-first century, Mr. Peterson.
It seems doubtful he was able to put on a shirt or pants and face his classmates for several days after
he absorbed your beating furor.
If you want to put yourself in his place- think of someone who is twice your size, and considers himself as the designated arbiter of right and wrong in your life. He strikes you repeatedly, purposefully until your body is littered with scars.
You may understand at that time the principal lesson your son has now learned.
There is nowhere to run- nowhere to hide.
I have never ever once heard a child abuser say; 'I am a child abuser.'
However, many many times I have heard the cruel ones say point blank: 'I am not a child abuser.'
Whenever you think to call abuse, discipline, do a bit of math, even if your mom didn't.
Calculate whether or not you have a decidedly more than double weight advantage over the person
you intend to strike.
Calculate whether you might have a more than squared (x to the second power) age and life experience advantage over the person you are about to strike.
Calculate the height advantage you have over the person you will strike.
Calculate the proportional height/weight advantage you have over the person you will unleash force
upon.
That will take more time; but your weight has much more heavy muscle in it than the weight
of most other people- especially growing people.
For instance, you may weigh three pounds for every inch of height your frame supports. No four
year old could steel himself against that, physically, or probably even emotionally.
If you take the time to do that mathematics, perhaps your rage will have had some time to abate.
(I know you believe that amount of rage against someone four years old may be normal- but it is not.)
Can you now agree you clearly may have been out of control striking a four-year-old? You hit genitals. Did you make him strip, or was your force powerful enough to tear through his underwear?
Either way, Mr. Peterson, that does not indicate a good quantity of discipline in you.
If your mom is to blame for your present behavior, sir, then you haven't fully grown up.
Find someone who cares for you, and who knows how very wrong this inflicting of bodily harm is, even if you are not still on great terms with this person; then listen to what the person tells you about what you have done so wrong. Yes sir- you meant to hurt him. But you need to hear that from someone who you know cares about you.
Your son will need an education in this twenty-first century, Mr. Peterson.
It seems doubtful he was able to put on a shirt or pants and face his classmates for several days after
he absorbed your beating furor.
If you want to put yourself in his place- think of someone who is twice your size, and considers himself as the designated arbiter of right and wrong in your life. He strikes you repeatedly, purposefully until your body is littered with scars.
You may understand at that time the principal lesson your son has now learned.
There is nowhere to run- nowhere to hide.
8 Million Horses
Of course we had an Industrial Revolution.
We killed 8 million horses in WWI.
We are a wonderful creation in many ways- but we can be barbarous...
terribly, terribly barbarous.
How in the world were the farms to be productive after that?
People were quite obviously going to continue the starving they began in the years before
the war.
We killed 8 million horses in WWI.
We are a wonderful creation in many ways- but we can be barbarous...
terribly, terribly barbarous.
How in the world were the farms to be productive after that?
People were quite obviously going to continue the starving they began in the years before
the war.
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