Enough Shit- A Not Completely Serious Post (R-rated)

I have been having fun watching all the TV news people and pundits having fun with Donald Trump's latest pronouncement denied by some, insisted upon as truth by others. They have been having a field day, regardless of their ideology or political leaning with the word itself.

Warning, here it comes.

Shithole.

My fun is in how it takes me back 50 years to when I was a college station DJ and newscaster. That was around 1966-70 to be exact. George Carlin hadn't gotten WBAI into trouble with his words you can never say on TV which came out in 1972. In case you don't remember, the first word on the list was, yep, shit.

Anyway, back in those days such words and milder were not allowed on TV or radio under any circumstance.Then, in the late summer of 1968, probably around the time of that infamous Democratic Convention in Chicago, the pop group Spanky and Our Gang came out with a song titled "Give a Damn." It's chorus went:

And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man

Here's how Wikipedia tells what happened:

In spite of not receiving airplay in several markets because of the curse word in its title, as well as its use of the sound of an African American man from the ghetto saying something that was not understood, ending in his laughter before the song's fade – and because it was a comment on racial equality that became the theme song for the New York Urban Coalition – the song became a regional hit where released and overall made No. 43. The band also performed the song live on an episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, resulting in CBS' Standards and Practices division receiving numerous complaints about the song's title being used during "family viewing hours". One such complaint reportedly came from President Richard Nixon. "Give a Damn" would become John Lindsay's campaign song during his successful run for mayor of New York.

But we sure had fun playing it and, mostly saying the word damn on radio.

The following spring The Beatles released a song that got a similar treatment. "The Ballad of John and Yoko" had the following chorus:

Christ you know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me

Needless to say, when we were allowed to play it, we loved the rebelliousness of the song. WLS in Chicago and WABC in New York, two of the BIG radio stations never played it. I know I wasn't supposed to play it on the station back home I worked at that summer.

Those days are long gone, of course. Lots of words a great deal worse than those are now found on regular TV from time to time, especially later at night, although lots of bleeping is still heard on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Which is why this (get ready for it) shitstorm over shithole is so much fun to watch. (Yes, I'm having fun writing this. There's still a little of that young rebel in here somewhere.) I haven't sat and paid close attention to the networks and news channels to know who is doing what with the word, who's bleeping, or censoring and who has actually used the word. I am sure there was a lot of backroom and production office discussion about how to handle it. But I am also fairly certain that apart from the political leanings of the newscaster or pundit, they are enjoying just being able to talk about shit like this, even if they can't or don't explicitly use the word.

Some of you have probably seen the cable TV interview program, Inside the Actors Studio. One of the ten regular questions that host James Lipton asks every guest is "What is your favorite curse word?" You might have guessed with this post what mine is. When shit happens, I usually say "Shit!"

But let me take a twist in this post. As much fun as I have had with watching all this shit on TV about a word used by the President, I am sick of this shit.

It is not about the word!
It is not that it is fun and perhaps even titillating to viewers.
It is not that the President of the United States knows how to swear. (Remember Richard Nixon's [expletive deleted] from the Oval Office transcripts? And LBJ I am sure had a bigger potty mouth than Trump ever will!)

It is about the attitude and the seeming racism that underlies it. It is about civility and compassion for people who are not as fortunate as we are. It is about the way the amazing and caring policies of the United States are being slowly eaten away. I have been challenged by a friend to name these policies that I have come to dislike and which raises a great deal of fear in me and many like me. Not that the President has a potty mouth. I don't give a shit that he does. I do care that he is doing things which many believe will undermine the future of this great country. I will be working on that post over the next days and hopefully posting it by next week.

Until then- to the news media and all the rest of us- let's stop this shit over a word. Let's stop using it as a sign of something it isn't and get to the real issues the incident has raised- one new one among many. Yes, I am guilty of using it to get my shit out on the table. But it is far deeper and far more dangerous than a simple word we can't ever say on TV.

I'll be back with more thoughts by next week.

Not a Time to be Silent

Link to find out more about this declaration and to sign it.

NOT a Racist Symbol?

Many claim it is a sign of a heritage and that it is not racist. Going back to the "strict interpretation" of those who supported it and promoted it in the 1860s. They thought otherwise....

As a people, we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.… Such a flag…would soon take rank among the proudest ensigns of the nations, and be hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN'S FLAG [sic].
-Thompson, William T. (April 23 and 28, 1863). "Daily Morning News". Savannah, Georgia.

Fine People- With No One to Blame?

Just when you think it has gotten as bad as it can, it goes on.
Mr. Trump called (at least some of) the white supremacists, "fine people." They are (?):

• Fine people who have a bad attitude? 
• Fine people who want to get rid of the Jews?
• Fine people who are ready to beat up anyone who isn't white- and even some who are.
• Fine people who wave a flag that by its very nature represents hatred and absolutely nothing that is part of the American tradition.
• Fine people who aren't to blame when patriotic Americans want to stop their hatred and violence.

When we move into a relativistic morality where everyone is correct and has a right to their opinion, even when it's hateful, we have stepped over into a moral dilemma of epic proportions. It is what can undermine who we are as a nation.

In a free-speech decision, the Supreme Court prior to World War I (Schenck v. United States) made some interesting and still in force decisions. One is the classic- free speech does not give you the right to cry fire in a crowded theater. It said, in its unanimous decision, that freedom of speech does not protect dangerous speech. Freedom of speech protection afforded in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment could be restricted, they said, if the words spoken or printed represented to society a “clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils which Congress has a right to prevent.” (-Link)

In my opinion, the Nazi/White Supremacist speech is, almost by definition, dangerous speech. By what it wants to do, it presents a clear and present danger to a civil American society and threatens those who they want to rid our society of with danger.

Yet those who protest them are as bad as they are? They are as much to blame? If the anti-Nazi protestor hadn't been there, she wouldn't have been killed by one of the Nazi sympathizers. If the anti-Nazi protestors hadn't shown up, there wouldn't have been a problem and no one would have gotten hurt. Of course that's somewhat true, but if the crime victim hadn't been walking down the street they wouldn't have been robbed.

Were there "fine people" on the white supremacist side in the demonstration? I would assume there were. Fine people can have horrendous opinions. That does not give their opinions more credence. It simply calls their decision-making skills into question.

If we have any doubts left about who Mr. Trump is aiming to please, David Duke, former leader of the KKK, took them away. As did Mr. Trump.

I pray I am not simply being a over-reacting alarmist, but we are facing the most clear and present danger to our American democracy that we have seen in a long time, maybe even since the 1860s. May saner heads and ideas prevail.

Words Don't Do Enough Today

When will we ever move beyond the racial issue? When will we realize that we need each other and our rich diversity to truly be the great people we like to think we are? One of the marks of what makes the United States so unique in our life is the great experiment that allows for ethnic diversity as a mark of being a citizen of the United States. It started when British and Germans and French started living side by side and began to break down barriers that separated them in Europe. Here- they were all Americans!

Then we struggled, of course. As each new wave of immigrants moved into the country they faced discrimination, prejudice, and variations of racism. Italians and Jews, Greeks and Irish were not considered part of the "white" culture, though all were as European as the British, French, and Germans. Roman Catholics were stereotyped as recently as the 1960s and their loyalty questioned because of their religion. We never faced the genocide we carried out against the native populations and kept kicking the can of slavery and racism down the road. But we did continue to evolve as a nation.

Asian immigrants joined Latinos (who had been here before some of the other immigrant groups) as the "color" of our national identity began to change. The richness of many colors and cultures added food and song, dress and language to our national psyche. So much has been assimilated, adopted, and cherished. More came from different religions, nations, and cultures. That wonderful bright beacon of freedom continued to shine, even if we periodically tarnished it or covered it up in fear. People kept wanting to come here because of who we say we are and what we have managed to accomplish. These are things that would never have been accomplished if we hadn't opened up our shores to the many immigrant groups, all of who have added new and exciting dimensions to our national character!

But there were those who disagreed and still do. The Jews and Italians would never be truly American to them. The Germans faced it again in the era of World War I. World War II saw citizens rounded up and put in detention centers because they were of Japanese descent. Even first generation American born individuals seem to want to disagree with the very openness that allowed their parents to come here in the first place. Through some incredible twisting of logic, citizenship- being a true American- is to them based on some ancestry that is not American. What crazy logic insists that someone whose family has been here for 75 years is more American than someone whose family came 175 years ago or even before the American Revolution?

Friends, that is insanity! It is also not part of the American spirit. It is not how we developed and grew into the nation we are.

And now I watch self-proclaimed "patriotic" [sic] individuals marching around Virginia waving the flag of the discredited and widely defeated enemy ideology of the Nazis!

That is where words come to a crashing halt. Emotions, deep emotions, come crashing in. Instead I have an image of my father standing somewhere in Germany or Austria at the end of World War II. As part of the victorious Allies he stands at the tail of a Nazi plane. That swastika over his shoulder is not a sign of white power. It is the sign of a defeated ideology of white supremacy- actually even more narrow than that- a specific type of white supremacy. One of the reasons the Nazis lost was specifically because of their hate-filled, racist, "Aryan"-based rhetoric. It was their inability to move beyond it in any way shape of form that led to their rerouting supplies and trains and personnel to make way for the trains taking non-Aryans to the death camps!

Dad and his fellow soldiers look satisfied. They have won. And they were about to do one of the most incredible actions by a winner in a war- they would help rebuild even those nations they had fought against! That is the American way! Not racism, revenge, and hate. The words of war had always been- "To the victor belong the spoils." We said, "No!" We didn't enter the war to gain territory, to overrun others, to take away their humanity. To us the spoils of World War II were a safer world for people to live in democratic ways!

And now, nearly 75 years later there are people waving that flag of hate and fear as if it was an American symbol.

Bullshit!

Over the past few weeks my daughter has been challenging me to be the person I have always been when it comes to this issue. Racism, based in slavery that we were unable and unwilling to truly work against in all segments of our society, remains our American Original Sin. I have been living with it, fighting it, speaking against it for most of my life. It was part of who I was in 1960 and 1963. It grew deeper as the 60s continued and I discovered my own elements of racism, bred into me by our culture. The work against racism is a deep part of who I am and what I believe.

• White people flying Nazi flags will not make America great again. It will only defeat us as it did the Nazis in World War II.
• Trying to ignore my own benefits of being white (and male!) in the midst of white supremacy makes me complicit.
• Making excuses for silence will always lead to more silence- and my being as much a part of the problem as the alt-right Nazis in Virginia.

I could rant on. And I probably will again. But for today I make my statements as another declaration of my hopes for a better way of celebrating who we are and can be as patriotic citizens of the United States. I will not allow bigots, racists, and hate-filled Nazis to destroy my country- the one my Dad and his generation helped make great!

A Long Couple Weeks

When the news keeps pounding like it has the past few weeks, we all seem to go into some sense of self-preservation. I know I have. I have been personally preoccupied with finishing the editing of The Tuning Slide book so it will be available for trumpet camp.I am getting near the final okay to print. (It better be soon- time is getting short.) I have also been working on a few other writing projects all of which has led me to more distraction than usual.

Then along came the deaths in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis. Before we even began to assimilate those there was the sniper killing 5 police officers in Dallas. I spent two days wanting to shout to anyone who would listen.

For. God's. Sake. Stop! Now!

I read the incredible pain in postings on Facebook. Everyone was hurt, angry, reeling, sad, stunned. It just seems to keep on going. These are hardly past the mourning period from Orlando, which was hardly past the mourning from San Bernardino. We are getting battered over and over with death, seen in ever more graphic detail thanks to our smartphone cameras.

I experienced the pain, starting with the fact that one of the deaths was in our Minnesota "backyard" and people I know knew someone who knew Philando. I heard the cries of law enforcement friends. Then I saw the reactions from Dallas, which, thankfully, began to turn the narrative in a different direction. While there were some highly one-sided posts, most were not. Most began to see the deadly insanity that is infecting so much of our thinking. Some pointed to the killer in Dallas as an example of the Black Lives Matter movement. Most saw him for what he was- another deranged individual, acting on his own as any of the number of serial killers have in the past years.

It didn't slow the anger of some in Minneapolis, but it did help the nation begin to deal with it. Former President Bush nailed it with his few but pointed words:

“Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”

People have tried to deepen divisions by trying to say things about Bush or Obama at the memorial service.

Stop it!

Why do we have to keep going there? Why does one have to be the good guy and the other the bad guy when they are standing there together? The partisanship goes on and on and on.

Stop it!

I don't want police officers to be in the kind of dangers they face.

I don't want African-Americans to be afraid if a police officer walks up the street toward them, let alone at a traffic stop.

I don't want police officers to be afraid of the African-American they are talking to.

I want both sides to talk and meet each other on equal grounds. I want both sides to be able to express their fears and frustrations without being told they are wrong. I want both sides- and all of us who support both sides- to celebrate that we are all Americans! Period! None better, none lesser. That's what we celebrated last week. Let's not leave it stuck there.

Calling Out Racism and Prejudice

Bill Moyers online presence last week posted an article by Todd Gitlin. (Link) It was titled

Trump’s Actual Racism and How It’s Thrived: Why has it taken so long for Republicans and for the media to call him on it?

He describes in some detail the history of Trump's racist statements showing that it didn't just start with an Indiana-born judge who just happens to be the judge in a case involving Trump U.

rhetorical excesses are not what’s roiling American politics. What we’re hearing is the white supremacy that speaks unabashedly of roundups, walls and rapists of color. Winking and nodding won’t serve the Republicans anymore. Dog whistles have been superseded.

Vox writer German Lopez isn’t having any of it:

“…Instead of calling it like it is, CBS News, MSNBC, The Washington Post and The New York Times have called Trump’s comments about Curiel ‘racially charged’ and ‘racially tinged.’ the weasel words the media typically uses to describe racism. It makes one wonder: What would it take for them to finally call Trump or his remarks just plainly racist? If claiming a qualified, vetted judge shouldn’t be able to do his job because of his race and ethnicity isn’t racist, then what the hell is?”

Oh, and then there's the oft-heard line that the African-Americans (you know, like the President of the United States) are racist against whites. Not to be too picky a wordsmith, but racism from a minority to a majority is not the definition of racism. There may be prejudice or discrimination, but it is not racism. Racism is a structural system of one race oppressing another, stereotyping them, keeping them from truly being part of the culture and nation.

After yesterday's killings it will only get worse. We will blame Muslim terrorism and ignore things like how it's okay for a terrorist to get a gun so easily. We will call for banning Muslims, but what will we do about those who are born in the United States? Deport American citizens? Put them in camps? Both have been done in the past. Our fear can do it again. Blaming all Muslims would be like blaming all Christians for the actions of the KKK.

I am tired of this. I am sick and tired of our national fear and anger leading us down paths of hatred and death and war.

Lord, help our human failings. Guide us in a way of peace.

I Guess Then IS Now

I wondered how long it would take. The answer is, today.

A post on Facebook today said

9 U.S. soldiers died this week...
No one bats an eye...

Racist boxer that dodged
the U.S. draft dies..
Everyone loses their minds.

So much wrong with this I can't even begin.

I will just bow my head in shame at the long way we still have to go.

May God have mercy on us.

# 42/April 15 - Jackie Robinson Day

Jackie Robinson, # 42, played in his first major league game on April 15, Opening Day, 1947.


The United States was forever changed.


Integration, Civil Rights, hinted at as a burning need when the African-American soldiers came home from World War II with fewer freedoms than  the countries they helped free.

Now baseball, the American National Pastime, was integrated.
Just his playing skills would have been enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. Being the first to break the "color barrier" in MLB made it more than about baseball. His character as a human being, unwilling to bend and lower himself, yet never resorting to returning hatred for hatred, shines through these 69 years later.

If you didn't get to see the Ken Burns produced program on PBS on Mr. Robinson, do so. It's more than baseball; it shows what makes the United States who we are- for both better and worse- and calls us to be more than we have been before.

An End to the Carnival? Maybe?

Well, tomorrow is the first primary of this election cycle. Finally! I was amused by the fact that the New Hampshire voting is taking place on Fat Tuesday, the traditional ending to the Mardi Gras or Carnival season. After that comes the rigor and intensity of Lent. It will be time for sacrifice and discipline and introspection within the Christian community for 40 days, excluding Sundays, of course.

What if we could hope that Mardi Gras New Hampshire (how's that for an oxymoron!) is the end to the carnival we have been witnessing for the past year or more? What if the carnival ends tomorrow? What if, after this, we get down to issues, debate reality, stop posturing, deflate the rhetoric and think about the country instead of ideology? Yeah, I know...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
-John Lennon

What are the odds? Pretty slim I would say. Up until recently the Democratic candidates have been doing okay with all that.  Until the Establishment discovered that Bernie Sanders really does have support. Out comes the name-calling, innuendo, and craziness.

The GOP on the other hand has been at it like that for a long time. If there is an extreme right-wing answer to a question, one of the leaders will give it. Marco Rubio spins into the moderate of the leading candidates. Donald Trump is looking for a way to get out on his own terms. Ted Cruz is still looking for someone who knows him to say they like him. The Establishment-type candidates are sinking lower and lower.

Yes, some of this is the media. But the GOP candidates are as much to blame. When they make statements that are often proven to be false and then continue to reaffirm them, they are not being up-front with anyone. When one refuses to be in a debate because the moderator may ask unfair or tough questions, we can guess it is about image and not the issues.

What's New Hampshire's track record? Fairly good, actually. The GOP winner in NH has gone on to the nomination 12 out of 15 times; the Democrat- 9 out of 15. If Hillary and Cruz win tomorrow, their chances will drastically increase since they also won in Iowa. (Winning both is a big deal historically.)

But this election, so far, has been setting its own standards of "history." One commentary I read online even sees this election as one where we may be seeing the first major realignment of American political parties in a long time. The anti-establishment element on both sides is, he says, quite significant. (I didn't save the location. Sorry. Will continue to look for it.)

Not to say the sideshow elements of this carnival will end after tomorrow. Unless there are two clear, decisive victories, some of that will continue. Any shift in "who's leading" after tomorrow may continue more aspects of the carnival. But, I have the hunch that in all reality the fun and games are over. Mardi Gras comes to an end and the hard work will happen. Super Tuesday is a few weeks away and that will mean lots of intensity.

My guesses? Very slim win by Cruz; larger win for Sanders.

The repercussions? Back to work guys. Stop strutting down Bourbon St. and let us see who you are.

Enough of a Horse Race

I have been watching the horse race and carnival sideshow we are generously calling the Presidential Election Campaign. All anyone seems to be interested in is:

• Who's ahead? 
• What are the polls saying? 
• Can anyone beat Trump? 
• Is Cruz that awful a person? 
• Is Hillary going to tank again? 
• Can Sanders be a socialist and still win?

That last question is as close to the issues as anyone in the press will go. And that's nothing but pulling a word out that will raise concerns and issues with voters. I am saddened, afraid, and downright upset about the whole process so far.

I know I have mentioned here before that I have been interested in politics since 1956 when, at age 8, my family's support for Adlai Stevenson was in  the minority in our north central Pennsylvania town. Politics hooked me as something interesting and important. The campaign of John F. Kennedy in 1960 settled my political addiction once and for all. I ended up a political science (government) major in college. I am a believer in voting rights being as important constitutionally important as gun rights or freedom of speech and the press.

In my study of history I also know that our campaigns have often been rabble-rousing affairs. The infamous John Adams-Thomas Jefferson election being among the slimiest, at least as far as name-calling and general truth-stretching.  In some ways, then, this particular election cycle has "fine pedigree" in our early history.

But I am not aware of any election cycle that could be considered as amateurish, mean, and so far off center as this one is. At least not at the presidential election level. There have been incompetent candidates at times. Some of them even got elected. But this one seems to be truly unique- one of a kind.

• When issues are discussed, they result in sound bites that call for carpet-bombing of women and children or having Mexico pay for a wall to keep their citizens in. 
• A reporter tells the story of how in most Trump rallies he points at the enclosure in the back where the media and reporters are kept and the crowd boos. Yet, it is that very media who is reporting and keeping him on top. 
• A conservative magazine comes out with an issue of essay about why Trump isn't right for America.  
• On the fringes someone has come up with the great view that Hitler was a left-wing liberal since he was a "socialist."  Therefore Bernie Sanders is like Hitler.

The party establishment of both parties is uncertain. Party hacks, both Democrat and Republican are afraid that if the non-establishment candidates get nominated they will lose. The political process has been hijacked by several different factors.

• Anger
From the end of the 2008 election cycle, anger has been at the bottom of almost everything from the GOP. Hints of it have shown up before, but this is beyond anything we have seen in a long time. The extremely virulent opposition to Obama's presidency has been so deeply rooted in those against him they have wanted him to fail so they could take over. If he had succeeded- unthinkable to them!

• Social media
What plays on social media? What gets attention? The mainstream media has been as much at fault in this as has been the biased media of Fox or MSNBC. Add the easily available presence of all kinds of opinions on Facebook and the Internet and you have an opening for any and all opinions to be expressed. Of course, most are preaching to their own kind, but their presence- and coverage in the press- only goes to flame the anger. No- I am not saying that we should limit any of these. Perhaps we need to discover that these views are the extremes- unwilling to compromise at any time with anybody. And that is not how democracy works.

• Money
The Koch brothers are only the visible sign of the invisible evil of an oligarchy at work. Since Citizens United, corporate money has dominated. Here, from Wikipedia, is a way of looking at it:

Plutocracy is a form of oligarchy and defines a society ruled or controlled by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens. The first known use of the term was in 1652. Unlike systems such as democracy, capitalism, socialism or anarchism, plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy.

Actually we seem to have developed two sides of this- the liberal plutocracy and the conservative plutocracy. These are the ones who fund and support the established orders. They were deprived of some of their historic power starting with Teddy Roosevelt's progressive reforms in the GOP in the early 20th Century and Franklin Roosevelt's with the Democrats in the 1930s and 40s. They have been working hard to gain it back- and are succeeding. They have convinced the greater population that "trickle-down" economics works and that "job-creators" deserve breaks in order to create jobs. Again, this is happening on both sides of the political spectrum. Part of the appeal of a Trump or a Sanders is that they present themselves as outside this system of support.

• And did I mention anger and hate?
Add hate to the anger and you have a dangerous mixture. I would even go so far as to say racism is the final straw that has broken the political process.No one will ever convince me that the opposition to Obama's presidency was not fanned by racism. That does NOT mean that all of us whites are racists. Many who opposed Obama were not- and are not- racist. But there is an undercurrent of racism- systemic racism- that has been at work which then pulls in the interest of those who may truly be racist. I believe it took the election of a "liberal" African-American to bring it out. I also believe that some of the "birther" crap about Cruz stems from the same underlying Euro-centrism. Rubio as another Hispanic and Sanders as Jewish will face it if nominated.

So, in the next couple weeks we will see Iowa and then New Hampshire play a role far beyond their place in the American political scene. Anything can happen, of course, in either state. But it will not be based on substantive issues. Not at this point. Everything is too raw. We need some perspective, which has been sadly missing so far. I don't see it as getting any better.

Nor do I have any idea who will end up as the nominee of either party. Sanders, at this moment, has as good a chance as Hillary, who is on a potentially razor-thin edge. Trump and Cruz are certainly the most likely front runners, at this moment. I hope and pray that the tenor of this campaign will change, though history keeps me quite hopeless about that outcome.  But I also remember that Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee have both won the Iowa caucuses in the past.

I have hunch it is going to be quite a ride.

A Last Minute Post

Well, last minute in the sense that I am actually writing this just prior to posting it. Most of my work on the blog is, by nature, done ahead of time. That way it doesn't become a rush to get something written and posted at the last minute before midnight.

But because of scheduling up ahead of me over the next 10 days, I knew that if I waited to post these thoughts, it might be "old news."

So I decided to post this one today. That way it really is current events.

• It's about that lion in Africa and the Minnesota dentist who paid $50,000 to have it lured from a sanctuary so he could shoot it with a bow and arrow then track it for 40-hours in its agony and then kill it.

• It's also about the Cincinnati university police officer who has been arraigned for murder in a traffic stop gone bad.

• It's about the insanity of the alleged Planned Parenthood videos that purport to show that the organization is a venal, baby-killing group out to make money from fetuses.

• It's about the presidential [sic] candidates calling Mexicans rapists and accusing the sitting president of leading Jews to the ovens over a nuclear arms deal.

• It's about denying climate change because it will hurt business and profits to do otherwise and the hell with the health of the planet.

• It's about having to have 30+ women claim to be raped by a well-known celebrity- and even then saying it didn't happen until his own words describe exactly what they have claimed.

It's about our human tendency for hypocrisy, prejudice, narrow-mindedness and the belief that I am right and everyone else is wrong. (Myself included).

What got me started was seeing the incredible world-wide and national reaction to the lion killing. The reaction was far beyond that for any of the other killings we are hearing about. The reaction to a lion (and I AM an animal conservationist!), even a "famous" and protected lion, raises more anger than much else that is REAL news. Every time three is a mass killing somewhere in the country we are told to pray and NOT politicize. Yet every killing like that does have a political side to it. We are told to remember that all lives matter, not just black lives, even when it is the black lives that seem to be of far less value in how, when, and where they are killed.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• all black lives matter, and when they are being killed in traffic stops or as the result of incredibly far-fetched traffic stops, THEY matter and we need to pay attention.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of billions on the planet matter when we are facing potentially catastrophic changes to our environment that will put those lives in severe jeopardy.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of the Israelis and the lives of millions of others in the Middle East matter enough to work hard at preventing nuclear weapons from continuing to proliferate and putting all of them at risk.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE, why do we ignore the cries of

• women who have been raped, 
• veterans who have been denied health services, 
• poor people who can't get health care, 
• police officers who are under incredible pressures and need better support, stress assistance and training for their difficult jobs, 
• bullied gay youth, 
• the mentally ill who are seen as crazy and to be held in contempt, 
• prisoners in overcrowded prisons that are filled with non-violent offenders incarcerated because they possessed marijuana
• the immigrants who, like most of OUR OWN ancestors are here to build the American dream and rape and pillage?

I could go on. I can rant on this for hours, but all I will do is get myself all worked up and feel like I am helpless and powerless to do anything about it. I had to get it off my chest, now, when it is news.

• Pray for peace
• Work for peace
• Uphold peace
• Make peace a reality 
• Live peace each day

We all matter- let's act that way and not just say it as a way to reinforce our ideology or put down someone else's life.

Let's live today as if each person we meet has a life that matters and then treat them that way.

The Last Miles

One more post from my recent reading and experience of Miles Davis. It was part of what molded him into the kind of artist he was- and what earned him some of the disdain of others who found him aloof and not willing to engage.

It is the issue of racism- and, as recent months have seen, it is an issue that is still very much with us.

Davis had a deep and abiding anger at the American racist foundations. He speaks of returning from Europe in the 1950s and 60s where he was accepted on a different level- as a human being. He speaks of the way white musicians took what the black musicians developed and earned more money doing the same type of thing.

He did not begrudge the great white Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain, among others. But he always was aware of the racial divide in the country.
jazz musicians, composers, etc. He welcomed them into his groups, even when black colleagues didn't like him to do that. His ongoing work with composer Gil Evans, for example, produced

He recalls the time when he was arrested outside the NYC club where he was headlining because he reacted to the white policeman who didn't think a black man should be hanging around there. He knows he was often treated as less than the whites even though he grew up in an upper-middle class life in East St. Louis, IL, the son of a successful dentist. He refused to "perform" on stage in ways that would reinforce the old stereotypes of the black musicians. He had great love for Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, but regularly took them to task for their racially stereotypical grinning. It is hard to find official pictures of him that show him smiling. He refused to give white America that satisfaction.

In many ways he refused to be anything but Miles Davis, as he understood himself. His continued openness to white musicians throughout his career was as much a part of that as his unwillingness to be a sideshow clown or black version of the black-faced expectation of many whites. He paid little attention to most white critics who he felt were judging his (and most black jazz music) on white standards that were irrelevant.

Remember- he lived the 50s and 60s and all the preceded them. His racism-radar was finely tuned. He put up with no BS, especially when racially based.

Let's be willing to admit that some of this was Miles' personality. It was what made him who he was, and what made his music so exciting, innovative and never the same from year to year. He did not suffer fools- nor was he willing to wait for what he saw he should be doing. The jazz world - and all of us even these many years later - continue to reap the benefits.

In this ongoing time of renewed racial tensions, challenges and counter-challenges in the United States, reading Miles' words reminded me that no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to get inside the feelings of racism from the black person's experience. I blend in; I am white; I don't know that pain that has been deeply planted in the souls of those who have been slaves. I believe there is such a thing as "racial" or "ethnic" memory. We know much more about genetics today and we believe that the experiences of our ancestors makes "epigenetic" changes in genetic coding that can be passed on to future generations. While I have always been a strong advocate for civil rights, reading Miles' thoughts and hearing his anger from 50-60 years ago, opened new awareness and reflection.

While it may not be at the level it was in the 50s and 60s, we still face it, we still must be on guard for the subtle and not so subtle ways that racism plays out in our national American psyche. None of us is immune to it. Perhaps Miles Davis can also have something to teach us about our racial relationships that may be even more profound and important than his music.

That would be quite an accomplishment.

That Which Cannot Be Named

I am thinking of the phrase used to describe Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series. Voldemort is, as most probably know, the evil one, the devil. He is the Dark Lord. Even to say his name is to invoke his power, hence the use of epithets. "He who cannot be named" kept a lot of people from invoking the awful name.

Over the past few days I have been feeling like we are doing the same thing in some ways in our nation- or at least parts of it. The mass killings in Charleston on Wednesday have again brought our national original sin to the forefront. Except when you don't want to admit its existence. All kinds of spin and "explanations" have been given.

• One presidential candidate called it "an accident" which the president politicized into gun control.
• Another presidential candidate said he didn't know what was going on in the shooter's head, in spite of the fact the shooter made it very clear what was going on in his head.
• Certain news outlets spun the whole thing into an attack on Christians and the church, a favorite right wing explanation. Again, the shooter was very clear about his reasons for shooting and even choosing this particular church because of its historic role in gaining civil rights.
• Others have gone so far as to "blame" one of the victims, a South Carolina State Senator, because he voted for gun control. If he hadn't, there would have been people there in the church carrying weapons and would have stopped the carnage.

And yet:

• Accident? You've got to be kidding me!! 
• When a black teen robs a store for cigarettes, he is a "thug" almost deserving of being killed. Nobody asked if he was on any psychotropic meds that could have caused him to lose his ability to make good decisions.
• When a black church was bombed in the south in the 1960s no one saw that as an attack on Christians. They would have been laughed out of the media.
• Many churches in open-carry states forbid guns in the building. It would have been the church's fault, then, if they had refused to allow open- or even hidden-carry.

That which cannot be named. Our national original sin, present since the creation of the country.

Racism. Through slavery. Through the subjugation of native people. Through Euro-centric superiority. Many groups have felt its sting. But only those who looked different- of different color most often- could never escape it. They could not blend into the white background. They could not change their names, "anglicize" them.

That which cannot be named.

And why the hell not? What are we afraid of? Are we afraid that if we admit that it still exists we might have to confront it in the sometimes subtle ways it shows up? Are we afraid that if we admit its ongoing existence we will have to look at ourselves and see where we might still be impacted by it in our own actions? Are we so concerned that we look and feel "perfect" as a nation that to admit to any shortcomings or national character defects will be "unpatriotic" and blow the cover on our denial?

As I ponder this I realize that I am talking about the need for recovery at the deepest places of our national soul. Here, watch this video:



To be American is to be Euro-centric? Wrong! Forever wrong!

Denial only allows the illness of prejudice and racism to grow, just as addiction. In the Twelve-Step fellowships, not to mention the fellowship of Jesus' followers, it is only when we can admit to the presence of the problem that we can deal with it. If it cannot be named, we can't change. If we don't get down to the nitty-gritty of our national character defects we can't confess them to our higher power and ask for them to be removed. We can't because we don't believe we have it. We are cured; we are healed; we are open to people of all colors and creeds. And when we are not, well, it's their fault.

I have been challenged many times by my own ability to fall into my character defects. I can't begin to count the times when this systemic racism has reared its ugly head in my own head.

Damn, I thought I was passed that. But no, I am human, and as imperfect as the next guy. Like with my addiction, I need to be always aware of the possibility of falling back into old habits, old behaviors, old ways of thinking that I didn't even know I had.

Let's talk about this. Let's listen to each other and the pain that is still being felt in our society. Let's be honest about ourselves and what is happening. To admit to it and work on doing something about it does not undermine our national identity. It shows our strengths and willingness to care for each other!

O God,
Your children of all colors
Have been hurt by racism.
Help us heal together.
Help us do the inner work
To be open to your grace
And to the "balm in Gilead"
So our hearts are converted,
And we can join hands
To do the constructive work
Of love and justice.

Amen.
--Education for Justice

He Made a Big Differemce

April 15 was Opening Day in 1947, Jackie Robinson's first season in the Major Leagues. The festivity is a result of Robinson's memorable career, best known for becoming the first black major league baseball player of the modern era in 1947. His debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers ended approximately eighty years of baseball segregation, also known as the baseball color line, or color barrier. He also was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, remembered for his services with the number 42 jersey. (Link)

A 50-Year Memory: The Death of Malcolm X

May 19, 1925 - February 21, 1965

He had quite a journey and was reaching some important new insights at his assassination. Perhaps that is why he died; perhaps not. He was a person of growth, never willing to stay where he was.

Who Do We Care About?

I know I'm not the first to say this, but I want to add my voice to the discussion, if only in a brief way.

The Headline:

Nigeria's forgotten massacre: 2,000 slaughtered by Boko Haram, but the West is failing to help

Then the story:

Ignatius Kaigama, the Catholic Archbishop of Jos and president of the Nigerian Bishops Conference, spoke as bodies lay strewn on the ground in Baga, in north-east Nigeria, after a surge by Boko Haram fighters who took over the border town earlier this month.

He highlighted the stark difference between the West's willingness to act when 17 people were killed by militants in France and the approach to the slaughter in Africa.

Estimates of the death toll in Baga and surrounding villages, which were razed by fire, have been put at up to 2,000. Most of the dead were women, children and the elderly who could not flee in time, said Amnesty International, which labelled it the group's deadliest massacre yet...

The gulf in the attention between the murders in France and the Nigerian massacre was highlighted Twitter messages yesterday.

Imad Mesdoua, a political analyst at consultants Africa Matters, tweeted: "No breaking news cycle, no live reports, no international outrage, no hashtags." The actress Mia Farrow and Stephanie Hancock, of Human Rights Watch, were among those to observe that there had been "no outrage or headlines" about the Nigerian slaughter.

Harry Leslie Smith, the 91-year-old who electrified the Labour Party conference last year with a speech on the NHS, said on Twitter: "Note to the media and Western politicians that Paris isn't burning but Nigeria is."

--The Independent

Do we even care?

Why not?

Parisian lives matter; African lives do not?

Lord forgive our selfish self-centeredness and lead us to compassion and care.

This Brought Me Up Short

An interview with a rapper on the radio the other day made me think about something in an entirely new way. He was discussing some of the more common themes found in rap songs that have been used- and criticized- over the years. You hear a rapper sing of something- and you naturally think the rapper is telling his own story- especially if it is an African-American singer.

Well, this particular rapper made the statement:

When people hear Johnny Cash sing "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die [from Folsom Prison Blues] no one really believes that Johnny Cash really did that. If I [the black rapper] sang those words they would think I really did it.

Whoa!

How true is that! He would also be condemned and told he was corrupting youth and encouraging a Black culture that was violent. But Johnny Cash made millions from that song. And, on the most famous version, Live at Folsom Prison, the audience cheers (!!!) when he sings that line.

This is what many of us mean when we talk about "white privilege" and "systemic racism." We don't even notice the racism. Myself included.

No one questions Johnny Cash's deep and abiding Christian faith. No one challenges his glorifying a violent "white" culture. He doesn't even have to justify it. He actually wrote the song when he was young, in the military, and unknown.

It was just a song.

Well, as I said, this brought me up short and as so often happens, made me think more about my own wrestling with the ongoing demons of racism. Systemic racism, white privilege is NOT the result of people being racist. It is built into the system and we don't even notice it. We have a long way to go.

Just Thinking

When working on some of genealogical research the other week I had one of those moments when the world made a little bit of a shift. It comes with just a simple questions:

Why do almost exclusively self-identify with the "family" of our birth surname?

I was looking at my family tree and realized that just three generations back (my great-grandparents) I can potentially find as many as eight surnames and the one more generation (great-great grandparents) there would be sixteen. Does that mean I am as much a Klein and a Keller and a Freighley and a Ritchie as a Lehman? Then, by marriage I am also related to another whole set of family names on my wife's side. But without confusing it too much, just sticking with my direct ancestors, who am I?

This made me think back to a part of the Race exhibit that was here in Rochester a few years ago that was originally developed by the Science Museum of Minnesota. The basic point of it was that, at the very heart of who we are, we really are mutts. We are a mixture of ethnic, national, religious and probably racial parts. Genetic research is showing this truth at an even deeper level.

Another piece of the reality also goes to what portion of who I am is what national background. I know there are Ukrainians and Germans, Scottish and English back there. Because of ghettos in the Ukraine before 1900, that may be the greatest part of my heritage. Yet all these years I identified as of German background. And, since the Germans arrived here at least 80 years before the Ukrainians, that also makes me American, since here is where I was born. As were members of my family back at least five generations.

Maybe, then, for me it's time to even drop the hyphenated ethnicity and just be American.

See what I mean when I say it caused a slight seismic shift of self-identity.

Which brought me back to a discussion some of us were having on an ethics meeting about diversity. We finally got to the idea of self-identity. Different people talked about different ways of doing that. It struck me at that moment that my cultural identity is as much 60s Hippie Radical as it is a German-American or whatever. In fact, maybe even more so. A great deal of that ethnic identity has broken down in my life.

That wasn't true of my family. But perhaps being part of a religiously mixed marriage of the 40s and 50s helped move me the way I have.

So that's where it has taken me today. I look forward to the day when these issues are resolved in favor of being part of the one and only human race and where nationality is truly as a citizen of the world trying to keep our world from falling apart.

I think know that's what John Lennon was singing about.