Terror Within

 

“All lives matter”, they yell as they loudly drive by. While lives that do not, continue to Die.

 

“Just my opinion”, we hear, as they claim without tact. While what they say is quite false, as a matter of fact.

 

Unevidenced accusations make unjust situations. False witness, the sin, is the terror within.

 

“Saint Lawless County”, I say, expresses this lie. Police make it so, public safety deny.

 

“Your son killed himself”, ruled the so called Detectives, dishonesty dripping with hidden objectives.

 

Death from those pills takes an awful long time. “Minutes” was certified, documenting the crime.

 

No pills in his body the autopsy noted. That doesn’t matter, only how people voted.

 

Sheriff, Coroner, County DA, are People elected who make it this way.

 

Conservative Christian, self identified, while principled values are starkly defied.

 

When not for all, truth and justice we want, cannot exist in this world that we got.

 

As we do unto others, we do unto Him. We do unto ourselves, the terror within.

 

 

Tangled Hearts

Hearts that hang from fish line, like so many trophy catches, chime softly in the breeze.

But the strong winds of life are too much for the hearts to bear. With angry clanging, the lines twist together and strangle each other until the hearts become bunched together in silence.

When the storm passes, though a gentle breath of air may caress them, they remain mute with melancholy.

I untangle the lines. With both my hands, holding two hearts at a time apart from each other, I navigate the intertwined mess and slowly bring order back to the chaos.

One time, I was untangling the lines while holding a lit cigarette in one hand. The burning hot end touched the plastic string suspending a free heart, immediately melting it’s connection to the others. It dropped into the flower bed below and disappeared.

After this, the next time it came to untangle the hearts, I decided to try it with only one hand. I began the challenge and immediately became frustrated. Who am I to think only one hand can untangle hearts?

“You can’t do it”, I said to myself. I heard myself say this to me. I replied, “I CAN’T do it?! I’ll show YOU!” And then I darn well did it.

The hearts again chime softly in the breeze. The storms of life periodically mangle their links to each other, as will always happen so long as they dangle exposed to God and Everyone. But We can restore the sweet music, if only one of Us musters the determination.

Why Are You Angry?

Why Are You Angry?

Are you angry about anything? If you say no, you are either a liar or an emotionally challenged human being.

If you say yes, what are you angry about?

This is the crux move of evaluating anger. What is the source of the anger?

Are you justified in feeling your anger?

Was there an injustice? By who’s terms? Was a horrible wrong committed?

What is the target of your anger? Is that subject responsible for the wrong thing that happened?

Are you angry at yourself? Did you commit the same behavior that you are angry at others for?

How do you express your anger? Do you justify your expression of it? Do you ever feel badly about it? Do you regret it later? Why?

Does it matter to you what other people’s reaction or non reaction is to your expression of anger?

If so, does that reaction or perception of what you did change the way you perceive your anger?

How do you judge other people’s anger? Do you ask them what they are angry about? How do they respond?

Listening is love. Ask. Reply to questions. Live.

Truth Is Peanuts

A discussion came up at work the other day. Three out of four people on the crew weighed in on the ultimate question. I was the only female on the four person crew, for whatever that is worth. What was that question?

“Peanuts are legumes” said one of the guys. This was a discussion about the differences between nuts, fruits, pits, seeds, etc. “But peanuts grow under the ground as part of the root system”, I said.

I immediately thought back to a time when I was about 12 years old and had sent away for peanut seeds (raw peanuts) to grow my own. As a science experiment, of course, not a Jimmy Carter get farmer rich quick scheme. A note that this was the late 70s and our peanut farmer president spawned all sorts of interest in areas related to his personal biography.

I remember looking at the black and white line illustration of the profile of a peanut plant showing the peanuts themselves (dozens per plant) growing underground. I remember harvesting my pitiful handful of peanuts from maybe three plants that actually grew. And having to dig them out from the ground. Then washing the dirt off them before roasting.

The other two guys on the crew said no. They had done pipeline work through peanut fields and they specifically remember the peanuts hanging off the plants just like peas, beans and other legumes.

I told them of my experience. They insisted they knew what they saw.

I questioned out loud my own memory. After all, I was 12 when I personally experienced the detailed growth cycle of a peanut plant from empirical experiment. They were adults, knowing nothing of the growth cycle of peanuts but traipsing through a peanut farm at a certain time of maturity and seeing what they remember they saw.

I googled it. They did not.

The next day, I introduced the topic again with a question framing my only interest in this particular discussion of peanuts.

“What is your confidence interval for believing that peanuts grow above ground and not below?”

Are you 90% sure, 80%, 70%, what? That peanuts grow above ground and not down under the soil?

“90%”, said the most reasonable of the two guys. “90... 99%!” said the other.

99%?... really? Did you google it?

I don’t need to. I know what I saw.

The most reasonable of the two guys started googling on his iphone thingy. (I am a techno ignoramus, so I have to get on my laptop in evenings to do such self-questioning).

Peanuts grow underground.

They are not part of the root system. They grow from a shoot sort of like a rhizome and the peanut grows underground. And they are legumes.

Heads did not explode. The guys accepted the truth of subterranean peanut growth... then began to wonder how their memories were wrong. They knew what they saw. Or they know what they remember seeing. Maybe they saw eroded peanut hills with ready to harvest peanuts already exposed near the base of the plant eroding out of the soil? Probably.

The guy that was not the most reasonable of the two said, “well, it doesn’t matter”. What doesn’t matter? “Whether peanuts grow above or below ground surface.”

I bet it matters to a peanut farmer, I thought. But, I said, “I think it matters that most people go through life with a 99% confidence interval of their rightness on issues they are completely wrong about.”

Boy, does it matter.

The final lesson of this episode came when the guy that was not the most reasonable of the two said that he staves off the problem of false high confidence by questioning himself.

Seriously. He said that without any hint of irony.

I hope nobody really wonders why the world is so screwed up.

 

I was the one that questioned myself. The boys did not consider questioning themselves in light of my shared experience with them. I questioned myself based on THEIR shared experience with me.

 

All it came down to was respecting another's experience enough to consider it. In the end, we were both right and both wrong. But the truth came in the questioning, not the false confidence of self-righteousness.

The Bill Cosby Effect

Bill Cosby is a wonderful person. He is a humanitarian, a philanthropist, a mentor, a humorist with great wisdom and insight.

 

He is also a creep. He did rotten, criminal, horrid things to certain people when there were no witnesses to his actions, when he could get away with them.

 

If you believe that he could not possibly have done the awful things of which he is accused because he clearly has done so much genuine and sincere good, you are kidding yourself.

 

If you recognize that he certainly did do the awful things, but believe that removing his good work from the public record is an appropriate response to that reality, you are as dishonest and foolish as he is.

 

His awful behavior does not invalidate his excellent behavior. His excellent behavior does not exonerate him from his awful behavior.

 

Deal with each for what they are. There are people like this in all walks of life. They deserve to be treated appropriately for ALL of their actions. There is clearly something very wrong with Bill Cosby’s brain that allowed him to act in the despicable way that he has. Maybe the very good person that exists alongside the mean and shitty person is the pathway to redemption and change.

 

I think it’s too late for Bill Cosby. His celebrity and wealth is too heavily invested in his lies. The criminal nature of his ugly behavior is too much of a legal liability for him to admit to his actions to seek forgiveness and get the therapy he requires.

 

But, for the other Bill Cosbys in this world, the ones that so many family and friends know as wonderful people... when something leaks out from a long silent victim of theirs... take heed. Don’t be so quick to deny the possibility of selective and secretive rotten behavior. They need help as much as their victim does.

The WORST Insult

I have been told recently that it is the worst insult to be called racist. Yeah. You read that correctly. Being accused of racism is the WORST insult one person can say to another. Really. I am just an insulting person to describe what racism is and apply the definition appropriately. Really?

 

I think that actually BEING racist is the worst insult. Of course, racism-denying people don’t believe they are racist, and therein lies the main problem with this disagreement over what is insulting and to what degree.

 

How insulting do these same racism denialists think it might be when they accuse of being anti-police, people who are only standing up for fairness, equality of law, and justice for all? People who are exercising their Constitutional right to free speech, to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances are anti-police? Really??

 

How insulting do racism denialists think it might be for New York City’s “Top Cop” to declare that people do not have a Constitutional right to resist arrest? I must have missed the recruitment posters for the “March for your Constitutional right to resist arrest” event. Do they think that Eric Garner’s family should NOT take that as the WORST insult? Really???

 

How insulting is it for Officer Darren Wilson to have no remorse whatsoever about taking the life of another human being, no matter how much he believes he had to? I have heard accounts by others of having to, indisputably HAVING TO, take the life of someone to save themselves or defend others. It is the HARDEST thing they have ever done in their lives. Not Darren Wilson. “It” was a demon, after all. Hulk Hogan. A fiction, perhaps? Hmmm.

 

How insulting do racism denialists think it might be for us to hear that they themselves are not racist because they have nothing against black people, they just don’t like niggers. How about that n-word? Does just using it, regardless of the context, make ME racist? How about the people that actually speak that rationalization and really believe they aren’t racist? How about those that never have ever used the n-word in any context? Does that exonerate them from racism?

 

How insulting is it to be called the n-word? Can a white person even understand how insulting that might be? Say, compared to being called a cracker? Ooooh, are you soooo insulted by the cracker-word? Can’t say “the c-word” because that is something else. Are the meaning and history of the words equivalent in implication? How about the “folly of insult” that racist people are always whining about... that insulted people are being overly sensitive about being insulted? Yet, the racists are sooo indignant about being justifiably and accurately called racist.

 

How insulting is it to read news editorials in mainstream publications say that young black males like Trayvon Martin should stop committing so much crime if they don’t want to be gunned down for suspicion based on nothing other than race. Never mind that Trayvon was committing no crime whatsoever and behaving precisely as the racist editorialist suggests. Just minding his own business and stood his ground against a creepy aggressor. An aggressor who was NOT minding his own business, but baselessly judging another person then shooting them dead due to his own stupid assumptions and prejudices. (But, don’t forget, Terri, Trayvon was “going for his gun”. We KNOW that happened because Zimmy said it was so. Yeah, Zimmy’s head was smashed repeatedly against a sidewalk, too, even though his bald noggin was never smashed even once against a sidewalk, as per clear and obvious evidence to the contrary.)

 

How insulting is it to have the racism denialists declare that black people are targeted more by law enforcement and criminal “justice” because they are more criminally inclined? Really? Might that not be a self-fulfilling prophecy? You know, like if black folks are really just the same as white folks, but the false perception that black folks are more criminal subjects them to extra scrutiny and baseless assumption resulting in the expected result? Oh, “number crunching” they say... just some figment of some whining descendent of slaves’ silly imagination. Did they mention that slavery really wasn’t that bad for black folks? Historic revisionism they say. So many loving, Christian slave owners that gave the gift of Jesus to those otherwise hopeless savages are just not appreciated for their love of the lower black people. And Jesus.

 

How about those that just can’t bring themselves to say, all by itself, black lives matter? How about proving that you really do NOT care about black lives, by ignoring what black lives witness as their personal experience? How about ignoring the pain of having a family member killed for no good reason and then being told that the fault is their own for not having family values? Really??

 

How about not listening?

 

Listening is love. Refusing to listen, REALLY listen, is not being loving. How insulting is it to not listen to someone when they are begging you to PLEASE listen?

 

I think people that don’t listen to a plea to really consider what evil is in this world, I kind of think they are disgusting. I think they do not care about fairness, equality of law, liberty and justice for all.

 

I call them assholes sometimes. Because I think they are assholes. And I still love them. They matter to me or I wouldn’t bother to weep for their failure in humanity. I do this as I have my own failures to attend to. I take responsibility for my own failures, but I will be damned if I will take the blame for others’. What they choose to put out there is on them and them alone.

 

I can’t help but feel despair, but I will never, ever give up hope for redemption. The day I do that is the day I stop learning. And it is the day that I no longer want to continue living myself. Go on. Insult. I will listen. And I will respond and possibly insult, too.

Desperate People Do Desperate Things

“Desperate people do desperate things,” he said to me. I was a teenager in the early 80s at a meeting of my local Right To Life group, a movement in which I was active and passionate about. I had just asked an elderly man of Irish descent about his support for the Irish Republican Army, a recognized terror organization who used bombings and killings as expressions of political resistance to British occupation of North Ireland.

 

I was exploring the moral justification of anti-abortion extremists who engage in the same type of targeted violence and killing of people involved with providing abortion services as a strategy of fighting a “war on the unborn”. Everybody else I knew of in the Right To Life organization outright condemned the use of violence and denounced such killing.

“Desperate people do desperate things.” He replied the same way when I asked him about anti-abortion terrorists. He wasn’t condoning killing people to prevent them from killing, was he? He was just stating a reality of human behavior. I got the distinct impression that he sympathized with the emotional feeling of desperation and it added a justification to whatever desperate action ensued.

 

Flash forward.

The abortion debate continues. It has always been. From time immemorial women’s lives have been consumed by unwanted or unintended pregnancies. When are pregnancies so? Why would any person not want to be pregnant? Why would they want to be? What conditions in their lives makes a pregnancy and childbirth preferable or what conditions make it an astronomically harsh burden?

The glaring paradox in the politics of the abortion debate is that the lawmakers who claim to be pro-life are overwhelmingly against policies that help women in difficult circumstances to give birth to and raise a child. From quality health care access to food aid to pregnancy prevention strategies to Head Start to higher education assistance, they consistently vote against public policy measures that help women, children and families.

Lawmakers do not encourage women who find themselves in an unintended pregnancy to give birth, by denying them practical support for that decision. I have never been able to wrap my head around this stark reality.

The situation is further exacerbated by these same lawmakers who make statements and support policies that shame women for their unintended pregnancies, as though men do not bare any responsibility for unintended pregnancy (even as it has to be 50 to 100%). The "legitimate rape" talk and the proposals to re-define rape are the most demeaning and insulting of all, and these come from self-described "pro-life" men.

Lawmakers should formulate public policy to encourage effective education of both women and MEN in pregnancy prevention and to fund programs that provide complete practical support for people in difficult circumstances, including children AFTER they are born. Not everybody has loving and capable family to help them. Indeed, unintended pregnancies do not constitute the same magnitude of problem for women with loving, capable family or financial security, whether ending by abortion or birth.

There is something deeper in the sociology of the abortion controversy than is acknowledged in the political noise surrounding it. When the underlying cultural values that cause abortion remain the same, laws that restrict or criminalize abortion change nothing. They solve no problems because THE PROBLEM isn't the number of total abortions (which is always way WAY too many illegal or not), it's unintended pregnancy.

I empathize with the passion people on all sides of this debate have for it. I am interested in problem solving. Problems cannot be solved when the causes of the problems are misidentified or ignored. How do we change society to promote love, acceptance, understanding and real practical support for women with unintended pregnancies?

In the realm of politics, I say we start by taking politicians to task who talk out both sides of their mouths.

They do not want to prevent unintended pregnancies or rape. They want to prevent women from having sex of their own, personal volition without wanting to become pregnant.

When government imposes law that demands certain things of people, government is responsible for the outcomes of those demands.

 
Government didn’t create abortion and government can’t stop it. Only a compassionate and understanding society can do that.