"Duck and cover" became "I do"

This is a paragraph lifted verbatim (at least I owned up to it... hope she won't sue me) from an Ellen Goodman column. I use it for my own purposes, completely different from hers.
-----------------------------------------------------
"Are we safer? At the end of her convention speech Laura Bush talked about a time when schoolchildren were told to "duck and cover" under their desks in case of nuclear war. She said, "We need to explain that because of strong American leadership in the past we don't hide under our desks anymore."
---------------------------------------------------------
Oh, I remember those "duck and cover" school days. And my wife remembers being trained to line up in the hallways, face against the wall, a long line of little boys and girls about to become ashes. "Strong American leadership" of that day duped us into thinking, or pretending, the world was a much less dangerous place than it really was (is).

You know...just put your right foot in, shake it all about, and say "Duck and cover! Duck and cover!" and those nasty bombs won't put a silhouette of you on the wall.

A few years later a poster advised the following course of action should Nuclear War come a-callin':
1. Bend over.
2. Put your head between your legs.
3. Kiss your ass goodbye.

I really liked that poster. Now that I think of it, it's probably why I got married when I did.

"Huh?", you say.

When you believe the world could go poof (well, louder) any minute you really want to make the most of what you've got. And the best of what I had was in a different school 650 miles away.

We had listened to our government's lies about Vietnam daily. We saw the soldiers who didn't come home in boxes reviled instead of welcomed when they finally did get back. Yes, we were against the war, but not against the ones who went. We were against the ones that sent them.

We saw Nixon unmasked and Agnew defrocked. We saw John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Dr. King assassinated. We watched the Chicago Democratic Convention of '68; the illegal invasion of Cambodia and then four students shot by the National Guard at Kent State during a nonviolent protest; Watts and other cities in flames in protest of racial injustice; and before all that there was the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Soviet Premier Kruschev banging a U.N. table with his shoe, practically frothing at the mouth while he yelled "We will bury you".

He was talking to us.

A few years earlier, the government had told us to do stupid things like "duck and cover", knowing that was useless. And back then, just how did John Q. Public put Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and "crawl under a school desk" into the mental blender and fail to come up with "kiss your ass goodbye"?

I can imagine people in high places putting together an information campaign to keep the populace from sinking into mob hysterics...or political awareness. I'm sure they thought it better to prescribe this painkiller pablum.

The poster exemplified a more realistic approach to the world's dangers.

Anyway, despite being students at the time, being pretty broke and our plan not exactly finding favor in the parental world, my sweetheart and I decided we wanted to be together all the time, for as long as that might be, and before it was too late.

So, for 31 years minus working hours, we've spent just about every minute of our lives together.

If somebody drops another Fat Boy and the world does go poof (louder) we'll just hug and say "Glad we got married when we did!"

Dysfunctional Political Discourse

Certain people achieve iconic stature, despite the fact that most people don't know much about them. If you want to bash conservatism, disparage Rush Limbaugh. Want to do the same to liberalism? Take a swing at Ted Kennedy.

This is shorthand for true discourse. The vast majority of those who use this shorthand can't defend their statements with specific examples of a person's actual statements or actions. Reason? Because they have never read their subjects' statements, columns, testimonies, books, or other original source materials. They have never seen them in person, nor viewed them on television shows, interviews, or C-SPAN coverage. Any exposure they've had to these people is whatever the mass media has offered up in sound bites, small quotes out of context, or pundits' interpretations of their words.

Political campaigns distill this lack of discourse into an acidic brew of lies, innuendoes, and simplistic sloganeering. A truly hysterical send-up of this is a clip on jibjab.com (may take a while to load...you're warned). In this clip Bush and Kerry lambast each other in fine political humor that differs from real campaigning only by using more direct language, and in that the clip doesn't favor either one....

How many media clips of campaigning have you seen in which the candidate spouts something that boils down to a vapid "I stand for the American Way" or "I want to make this (country, state, city, etc.) great?" They state they have a plan to achieve all their jingoistic goals, but seldom get to the nuts and bolts.

Here's an example: I saw an ad for someone running for the Senate. In it, the candidate introduces his family saying his father is a minister, and his mother is the backbone and strength of their family. The candidate states he and his wife are bringing up their children with the values he was raised with.

Somehow this just isn't enough to get my vote. For all I know his genial father is a minister in a Satanic cult and his mother has a criminal record including public lewdness and animal cruelty. The "values" his kids are being raised with (the same as his, remember?) could include "do it to others before they do it to you."

The reason for this diatribe?

I'm sick of watching people trading accusations about their preferred politicians without any knowledge behind their words. This is a free and democratic country. We should all (myself included) take more time to read and listen to what our would-be leaders have to say. We should all (myself included) make a concerted effort to understand what the Other Person stands for and withhold judgment until we have something on both sides of the balance.

To do this we should demand that candidates explain themselves to us in plain English and in detail, in words they know we will hold them to.

If they can't do that, and if we don't make that demand before we elect them, then we deserve whoever we get..

The Word of God? Who told you?

Bible, Koran, Torah, whatever…. The Word of God? I don't think so.

So many people think they know the one and only Truth in the universe. Even though there are so many different beliefs, each holds fast to their own, knowing in their hearts that all those other poor people, the unfortunate fools, are lost because they don't see the same Truth.

All the stories told, describing events and conversations back to the dawn of time, the Creation of Everything, are said to be exactly as meant or even said by the Force that was both witness to and cause of those events.

So, who wrote all this down and when?

How much changed in the verbal retelling over so many generations after humans supposedly discovered, or were told, by that same Force, the Meaning of It All? How much of the original script was revamped, remembered incorrectly, revised to advance an ulterior motive, etc.?

You read all the time about religious scholars debating the true meaning of scriptures...and one group's views will win out and that will be their "unbroken line" back to a supreme being whose meaning they may have just misinterpreted. And how many times has that happened, in each faith, over centuries?

And how many times have hypocrites ruled the world's churches, acting as if they themselves were God, sending conquering armies out to destroy the world to remake it in their image? From the Crusades to street missions to young men in earnest white shirts, suits, and earnest pamphlets selling their brand-name one-size-fits-all belief; it's all a power play with humanity's own fears of nothingness as a weapon.

You'd better believe in Something or when you die it'll be forever. Or it will be Forever with Pain and Suffering! Or what it won't be is milk and honey and Serenity and Peace Everlasting, with everyone you ever loved (and maybe Fido, too!!) all united in Joy.

You don’t have to disavow a supreme being to to think if there was once a Way we have likely strayed from it. And that what is described at this moment in history as The Way simply must be wrong, even if only through unintentional distortion.

Or you could be a heretical unbeliever who thinks either fabrications or distortions are the framework the world's hopes are hung on.

After all the fire and brimstone ranting and all the calm persuasion, all the serene acceptance and the evangelical sales pitches, there is still only one absolute thing about religious belief.

Nobody knows the truth.

Belief is powerful. It is not Truth.

Johnny Grew Up To Kill The Abortion Doctor

Let’s see… life is sacred, because life is created by God and God is not to be interfered with by mere mortals; every life is as important as every other in the eyes of God….

How do people who profess that belief sanction killing another person?

Oh, it’s OK - and even a moral duty - to kill if the person killed doesn’t view the world in the same way?

The killer gets a pass from the higher authority of fanatical zealots who claim they know when it’s right to ignore God's will, even as they themselves understand it to be? The disjointed logic of their rollercoaster dementia will make you queasy.

Isn’t it like following Alice down the rabbit hole to say it’s ok to kill someone to protect the sanctity of human life? Or to maintain that only God can take a life and then, acting in his name, kill someone? Who appointed these people God's Vigilantes? Why, they did! And they think God told them to.

What, did God sort of take them aside one night into the shadows at the party? Put His arm around their shoulders and say "You trust me, right? And you know sometimes you just gotta do what ya gotta do, right? Well, I gotta do something, but I need your help. This is bigger than the both of us."?

Oh, I know what they say…better one abortion doctor be killed than allow him or her to kill hundreds of innocent babies. Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn for that argument. All it says to me is that these people think their own beliefs should rule everyone else.

Maybe medical science, including abortion, is God’s way of giving humanity Free Will.

People should have the right to act in accordance with their own beliefs, and struggle with their decisions the best they can.

And surely our society works best when no single group can hold others under the oppression of their Supreme Arrogance.

Cluster*

A Tale of Organizational Woe

Ever watched a school of small, darting fish? Or clouds of bison lumbering like small island nations cut free from the ocean floor in wandering traverses of unconstrained spaces? What you’ve got is a lot of movement without much consequence. Such is the organizational cluster*.

When you go full bore into the bowels of stupidity alone you get to bend an elbow and laugh about it later. One-upsmanship with a wry laugh and a chaser. Buddies laugh and play the game: “Think that was stupid? When I was….”.

There's no sense of ownership in a clusterfuck...you can't even laugh at yourself.

Clusterfucks are like the naked Emperor. Everyone involved realizes, or should, that somebody is bare-assed, but nobody calls it. So it gains momentum.

There are two essential elements to a good cluster*.

First an idea. It can even be one of your own. Later it’s always somebody else’s. Second, you’ve got to add too many people and leave out leadership. Like steam power, the idea is slow to build…extremely powerful…and not as easy to control as we’d like.

People “buy into” the idea, “get on board”… and remain clueless. They feel great to be moving, and damn the direction. They’re part of The Team and Making a Difference! Probably have cute little sloganeering buttons or banners that say so.

Then, into the vacuum created by lack of forethought comes foreplay. Group, orgiastic, hedonistic foreplay. “I know what!” shouts one. Another reveler cries “Yeah!! And then if we…”. Oooh, the ripples of pleasure!

Eventually somebody raises their head. Looking around over the shoulders of the rest they suddenly cry “We have to change direction!” The fish (or bison… you remember the bison/islands) jerk onto a new heading. And then somebody else does it. And then a couple of people have their heads raised shouting conflicting courses.

And it's back to the original idea….

Examine. Examine. Discuss and discuss. The idea’s carcass is beginning to bloat. Rot is lingering behind, unformed but casting a stench.

So people slip their best ideas into their pockets waiting to see how the wind blows; agree (and glance sideways…) or disagree with others' comments (but look statesmanlike for the Good of the Project).

Then comes the denouement (or climax, if you want to be that way): realization that nothing is going to be accomplished.

Next comes damage control, personal-style.

Drift away from center. Speak around your hand…. “Knew this was a bad idea.” “If Charlie or Marilyn had just gotten On Board instead of wasting everyone’s time….”

In some versions a hero type takes the stage to redeem the mission. The hero gets the faintly illuminated smiles and the “Nice Try’s” that come with the unuttered “… , loser.” Eventually everyone slinks away licking their wounds.

"Goddam it, this would have been different if it hadn’t been for Those Others!"

Separation of Church and State

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS should not be displayed on publicly funded property. They are unique to the Judeo-Christian belief system, and their explicit promotion by our government is directly contrary to the core principles of that government.

Some argue our Founders were Judeo-Christian people, and since our nation was founded on their beliefs the display of the Ten Commandments in publicly funded settings is appropriate. In fact, one of their principle tenets was that government should not follow their, or any other, particular faith.

In fact, the issue of religious freedom was incidental to the founding of our country, although perhaps not to the settlement of it. The Declaration of Independence was crafted after many perceived wrongs, but the wrongs were primarily economic and political. The colonists were disenfranchised by England. Without the same political voice guaranteed to other British subjects they were nothing but a source of income, unable to fund their own advancement or have petitions to their government heard.

Our Founders realized that despite differing religious backgrounds (even though largely sheltering under the same “Judeo-Christian” umbrella) they had something in common. They wanted to be free to live, work, and worship as individuals, bound by a social contract for the good of all.

The First Amendment forbids Congress to pass laws that standardize on or promote any specific religion. ("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 grievances.")

To display the Ten Commandments with public money, in government buildings, is to subvert the Founders’ wishes by another means: it is an official, paid-for recognition of Christian ideology.

It thus disenfranchises all but Christian faiths and confers on the disenfranchised a second-class status. It confers upon the Christian faiths a more influential, more powerful status.

Frankly I don't care to get into the Constitutional arguments because I think it's just plain wrong to do. I am just one lonely example of how millions must feel when someone appeals to me through an appeal to my belief...in their God.

Exactly what the Bill of Rights, with the First Amendment as its first entry, was meant to prevent.