Another New Era Begins

Seems people's opinions on liberals and conservatives are pretty well entrenched these days. Personally, I blame the media for creating 3 types of Americans.

On one extreme we have the liberals. Liberals are thought, by conservatives, to be nothing but lazy, good-for-nothings who are too stupid or high to care about the fact that the constitution is being ripped up right in front of their eyes. Liberals have no respect for anything, are all Atheists, which of course makes them evil, want to take all our guns away, and are going to be the downfall of this nation. These ideas, plus the fact the Old White Guard sees its days numbered, have many extreme conservatives stockpiling guns and Spam and building fortresses in Wyoming.

Then you have the other side, the conservatives. To liberals, conserves have no humanity in them. They are money grubbing old white bastards, richer than Americans  should be allowed to be and would not give their own mother a dollar for a loaf of bread if she were starving. They all go to church and believe Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs when the earth was formed 6000 years ago, that Christ is coming soon and the liberals are destroying our freedoms. They cannot say anything without using one of the following words: freedom, America, God, constitution, entitlements. The real words they want to say are forbidden (we are all mortified because there is a black man in the white house...shhhhh).

 Liberals see these extreme conservatives as pitiful , ignorant and paranoid Fox news zombies if they are poor, and scheming world dominators who hate anyone who is not Christian, male, white, straight and rich. "Let them die, it will decrease the surplus population" said the most famous of all extremists, Ebenezer Scrooge.

Then we have the last group who, to me, are the worst group of all. They are the bulk of the rest of America, the truly disenfranchised. They fit in neither extremist category, but because excess sells, the news media only presents the interesting fart left and far right. These middle of the roaders have nowhere to go. They trust no one in the government even though they desperately want to. But they all seem to have very strong opinions on things, yet have no idea what is going on in the world. The news bores them, or scares them, or they do not understand it, so they simply ignore it but ah, bring up any type of current event and they will talk you ear off on the subject they know nothing about. Oh and they are the first to bitch about their representatives or the president but refuse to set foot in a voting booth.

Today I watched Barack Obama be sworn in for a second term. I did not think there would be much of a turn out. I did not think people would care much, or even bother to watch it on TV or listen to it on the radio. After all, the exciting parts are over. We elected our first African-American president 4 years ago and re-elected him 2 months ago so the thrill is kind of gone. But not for me. I wanted to see it again. I wanted to recapture that feeling of hope, and progress and change, all those things Obama so artfully pulls out of me and yes, I do still have faith in him, and even if he ends up failing and going down as the worst president we ever had,  just the fact that we elected him , TWICE, speaks volumes about where our nation is really headed...hopeful and strong into the future.

I am sure liberals to all degrees, including myself, were joyous for many reasons today. Some to celebrate that we again elected a black president, that Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass would be proud as hell, that Americans  can embrace change, we can get rid of the old guard and, if for none of those lofty reason, we can officially thumb our noses at the conservatives and their extremist band of crazies.

My first impression when I turned on the TV, was of a bland second term swearing in. But wait. I looked around and Washington DC was packed full (over a million I heard later on) of people, all bundled up in coats and scarves, little children in mittens and Hello Kitty knit hats. I saw elderly black women cry as Obama spoke, I saw hope in a young white woman's eyes, I saw a small freckle faced red headed girl waving her flag and smiling, almost as if the good feelings there had overcome her (she was obviously too young to know what was going on). And I looked at her face and I saw our future there, just for a moment and I was inspired. When it was over I wished more people had seen it.

 

I headed out to Target shortly after that. I got out of my parked car and the very first thing I saw, I kid you not, was  a man in an Obama/Biden tee shirt. Then I saw a teenager in an Obama tee shirt. When I got into the building I began shopping an overheard a woman on her cell phone talking about how Michelle may not be the snappiest dresser but at least she dresses for herself and not for all of Washington. I heard another person on the phone breaking down Obama's speech, almost like he had it memorized. Then and elderly white woman passed me in what looked like a very expensive sweat shirt, machine embroidered with the presidential seal and Obama's full name around it. I was astounded. This WAS a big deal after all. All the pundits said fans of Obama the first time around were now disappointed, had lost hope, were angry and felt cheated but what I felt today, what I saw today, was just the opposite. I saw that same hope, I saw people excited and happy and looking toward a bright future. I didn't see apathy as I had expected (and I imagine if I were not at a store like Target and in a store like Neiman Marcus I would have seen people crying and carrying signs that this marks the end of the world...like it was supposed to do the first time he was elected...hmmm...).

I guess my point in this is that yes, Since Obama was first elected things have gone nutty in this country, both among the citizenry and among the politicians. Yes there is great fear, of what I do not know, but my guess is it all boils down to a fear of change. But fearing change comes naturally to humans. What doesn't come naturally to us is embracing that change despite the fear. It is not natural for humans to see the future they want and make it happen, regardless of what others say or think. We do not dare tread where others have not, it is not safe, it is not prudent. ...Unless you are an American.  If you rise up above all the fear, the fighting, the horrible name calling. If you look past the lunacy of threats of secession and the nation crumbling and civil war. If you look past our elected officials acting in such childish and spiteful ways these past four years, and of family members pitted against each other over ideas and ideals that never came to fruition. Rise above it and look down. What do you see? We are still here. We still voted our hearts. We kept the faith. We had a peaceful transfer of power. We are still a nation. We are strong, we are proud, we are the U.S.A. and today we took another step into the future, we elected our African American president for the second time, with hopes and dreams still intact and THAT my friends is what has built this nation and will keep her going and THAT is why after the ceremony, after the people in Target, I sat in the parking lot and wept.

 

Good vs Evil

 

(I will be changing the identities of the people in the article, for reasons that will become obvious)

Philosophers have pondered questions on the nature of mankind since we have been self-aware. Do we have free will or are our fates predetermined? Are we big-brained animals or divine creations? Are we inherently good or naturally evil? What of all the suffering in the world? Everyone will have their own opinion on this, depending of course on their outlook on life, experiences, and spiritual inclinations, or lack thereof. To me, the whole of all these ideas boils down to one seed of angst; we are the only creatures cursed with the foreknowledge of our own demise. This, I believe, is the cause of many a good and many an evil deed. It also makes us ask these question about who and what we are, why we are here and what does it all mean. We do not realize until we are half way through our life how short it really is and by that time we are scrambling to live the rest of it in the manner we choose...and that choice says a lot about who we are as individuals.

We are all aware of the suffering  in the world, whether it be on an almost incomprehensibly horrific scale (from the Holocaust to starving people who die daily every few seconds, to beaten wives, mistreated animals and forgotten children) to the daily troubles we all see and experience (cancer, poverty, the angst of old age, man's general lack of humanity to man, from ignoring the Salvation Army Santa to stealing another's parking spot) but we are blessed with a mechanism that allows us some joy in life. This mechanism blocks out the reality of the horror of life, keeps us from constantly feeling empathy for the starving and the beaten, for if we did not have this on some level, we could not survive. This is not an opinion. Statistically, the top reason for suicide is not unrequited love, nor loss of fortune, but the inability to filter out the pain and suffering of humanity, until the person becomes so overwhelmed with the suffering and the futility of trying to rectify t, that they cannot stand everyone else's pain any longer and they decide to depart. The sometimes humorous "goodbye cruel world" does have validity here.

So where do most of us fall? In the middle of course. We occasionally think of, and feel for, the hungry and sick in other nations, we either give to the Santa on the corner or we feel really guilty if we did not. We comfort the sick and help their kin, and most of us, in my experience, are decent enough sorts.

You are probably asking yourself where all these ramblings are headed. Well I have been confront with 3 human beings over the last decade or so, whose behaviors I am so shocked by, so horrified by, that it throws a wrench in my faith in the inherent goodness of humanity.

One was a wife beater who took a strong, feisty woman and made her a shadow of herself, the hitting being the kindest part. The verbal abuse she endured changed her, broke her spirit, and it has taken her a decade to recover, yet her kids still see him even though they are terrified of him. He makes them both feel sorry for him and fear him. What makes a man like that? He had a normal upbringing, he is smart and witty and talented, yet kills everything he touches.

The there is my friend's ex wife who I could go on forever about but am afraid his child may read this so I will not go into too much detail. This woman has falsely jailed him for battery to extort money from him, had the family dog put to sleep at the pound simply to hurt him, has hit and run him with the car on his own property, and violated so many laws it would take pages to list. This is more than a woman scorned. Interestingly, she is the living embodiment of The Picture of Dorian Grey; she  is getting physically uglier as her soul is deteriorating. She broke my friend's spirit too and by the time they went to mediation for the divorce he gave in to almost everything, the stress and "gaslighting" she had done being so bad he was carted off in an ambulance at one point. Yet the judge, the entire judicial system does nothing. She is the woman and does no wrong. It is infuriating and frankly a bit frightening. This woman has retained NONE of her "friends" from the marriage and now hangs out in bars so seedy the windows are blacked out. She refused to take her child to the doctor when the child asked her to because of pains in the back, saying it was stress and "pain builds character", refuses to allow the father to take the child for mental health treatment, and demands the child come home when she much prefers to be with her father, then leaves her there alone (she is a young teen). I had the opportunity to literally stand toe to toe with this woman. She was threatening me and I refused to back away. We stared into each other's eyes and what I saw scared me to death. I say NOTHING. No fire, no hate, I saw a soulless being staring at me and I have never seen that before. What is a person like this capable of? How badly is she damaging her child? And why won't anyone do anything about it? This is "an innocent farm girl" as she describes herself, brought up in the mid west on a farm with a plethora of siblings in what I have heard is a relatively normal household, with the exception of a bit of drinking.

The last person I have come across, and the most recent, became part of a group of people I associate with. She came across as a great person at first but in the end has managed to lie her way into undoing what our group has planned for a year, getting our funding cut, and alienating everyone. Again, a person we thought was good turns out to be someone who has no empathy, no idea what their actions and words do and frankly doesn't care.

That is the one thing I see in all of these people, a lack of empathy for others. They either do not see what they are doing but, most likely, they know exactly what they are doing and do not care, they WANT to hurt, they get pleasure from the drama of it all. Another thing they have in common is the ability to truly believe THEY are the victims in all of this. They will boo hoo to anyone who will listen to  how unfairly they are treated, they will accuse others of doing exactly the things they are doing, it is uncanny.

So what makes these people? How can the lot of them have a total of over a dozen normal siblings, yet these 3 came out evil..and yes, when you kill an animal, when you kick a pregnant woman in the stomach, when you lie and betray those that trusted you and opened their hearts to you, you are evil, not just mean, evil.

And the bigger question is how do we deal with it? You certainly cannot retaliate. They are a litigious group and have a way of swaying people that do not know them to their side. You cannot cause them harm, for then you are no better than they are and when you do bad things it always ends up hurting you more. The courts are no help. Oh and forget about forgetting about it. You cannot ignore people like this, they simply will not have it. They will do things to you until you are forced to act, until not acting will cause you harm in some way.

So getting back to the original ideas...is this nature or nurture? Is this the true state of our being, having goodness thrust upon us beginning at an early age and allowing society to keep us in line or are we noble creatures  harboring a few bad eggs? And what am I when I feel the need to do physical harm to these monsters, yet the rest of my life is spent in the happy pursuit of helping others, of creating love and home and family. Which is MY true nature? The kind hearted soul or the one who has  images of harsh revenge floating in their mind when things are still and quiet? Which am I really?

February, besides being my birth month (email me for the address to send your checks :) is the anniversary of the Beatles coming to American, but more importantly it is black history month. All month we are bombarded with images and stories of the tragic history of African Americans in this country. Yes we hear of the triumphs, but there is always the shadow of slavery lurking over our shoulders. It is a good time to reflect on what I have said. I do not know anyone whose stomach does not turn at the thought of owning another human, yet 100 years before I was born it was commonplace, and they were not just owned they were beaten and tortured and abused. This was done by the thousands, for ages...but now we turn our heads in disgust and remorse. So for the last time I ask you...which is the real "us".