Join us conservatives – easier than it looks

           I have decided to become a conservative. I prefer to be a classic conservative, the kind Edmund Burke might have appreciated, though the word “conservative” had little to do with politics in his time. Alas, the classic conservative might be rather rare today. So, I must aim at becoming a “neoconservative,” which is easier because “neo” political philosophies demand very little of believers.

          This might require considerable time, however. We conservatives do not move quickly. When we do move, it’s to duplicate how we remember the past and project that image upon the future. That’s not challenging. Neoconservative approaches to politics and leadership require less exertion because – I may as well admit I am a neoconservative – we have no real memory of past conservative surroundings and no interest in studying Edmund Burke. Our world view is limited, and we like it that way.

          We neoconservatives dedicate ourselves to detesting government, tolerating prejudice, waving the American flag often, loathing new ideas, blaming foreign “influence” for all sad developments, loving The Lord Almighty, and saying “no” to anything that looks, sounds, or smells like activism. The world is complicated enough without those self-appointed do-gooders, academics, and interveners mucking things up. Would Jesus be one of those people? Good Lord, no! He’d be in church where he belongs.

          Becoming a neoconservative simplifies a lot of things. As a misguided liberal, for example, I appreciated Newt Gingrich’s intellectual prowess, but I found his proposals dangerous. Now I salute him as a visionary and ignore his creepy scholarly proficiency. And Sarah Palin? Again, I used to chuckle and mock her, but now I applaud that woman’s every thought. I display a life-size poster of her in my office. Instead of snickering about her disbelief in dinosaurs, I scoff at the entire idea of dinosaurs. I am with her. Who made all that up, anyway? The Holy Bible does not mention them even once. Take that, science goons. Put that in your calculator and compute it. And take that global warming fairy tale and shove it. Has anyone been outside lately?

          Dick Cheney has consistently made me nervous. I considered him a threat to all that is good and an insult to reason. Besides, I got drafted, and he had several military deferments, an odd sequence of events considering his military view of damn near everything. Update! Mister Cheney must have been one step ahead of most of us. I thought getting a deferment in 1968 would be hailed only by progressives and hippies, but it turns out that conservatives like Mister Cheney knew someday it would be the mark of a powerful manly warlord. Who would have foreseen that? You must admire the man’s insight and cunning, even if he still makes you a tad nervous.

          Then there’s that whole God thing. Problems with that entire story have burdened me since I was 15. Being a neoconservative has alleviated my doubt. Now I know the Lord made the world in six days and chilled out for a day. I know the world is only 6,000 or so years old, and dinosaurs never walked the Earth. He hears my prayers, He’s on the American side of all wars, and He expresses himself through modern Country and Western Music. All ambiguity retreats. At night He speaks directly to me and tells me what to do to my enemies.

          Amusingly, I recently became an ordained minister of the Remedial Academy Tabernacle. I have the framed diploma to prove it. I can marry people, bury folks, and conduct general spiritual discussions. Really. However, given my new political view of the world, I must set that aside. In fact, I must denounce myself as an unprincipled, foul smelling, sinful heathen. I feel better already.

          Another area where the light of conservatism shines more brightly is that of economics. In my previous, heathen life, I found myself more concerned with the less fortunate, the poor schmucks at the bottom of the downward trickle. I supported means to put more money in the hands of the Average Joe. That, as the postal commercial says, was complicated and difficult for evangelicals and members of the Moral Majority to comprehend. Didn’t Jesus say we must always have poor? Well, my epiphany put things in order. The poor are not our downtrodden. They compose the foundation, the necessary fodder. The downtrodden are Wall Street bankers, stockbrokers, CEOs, and their misunderstood lobbyists. The economy has victimized these fine people. I lose sleep at night worrying about them, their families, and their bonuses.

          Health care? Don’t even start with me. Don’t start.

Paranoia? No, they’re out there

          I pulled the mail from the mailbox. As I walked to the house, I read from an official looking envelope. Warning: $2,000 fine, five years imprisonment, or both, for any person interfering or obstructing with delivery of this letter. U.S. Mail TTT.18 Code.

          The envelope had removable sides to be folded and torn to reveal contents specific to the receiver. It’s a “security” envelope. It appeared and felt official. It reminded me of my draft notice’s appearance and impression. Tax notices feel the same. Courts send similar commands. The next letter was from the Social Security Administration (Official business: Penalty for private use, $300) and the next letter was something from the Michigan Secretary of State.

          I stopped a few paces from the door. Surely all this mail was innocent, the product of my just having moved here. It added up to an interesting, coincidental mixture of mail, or it pointed to impending doom of some sort. I do not believe in coincidence. I glanced over my right shoulder — nothing out there except a concrete slab soon to be a garage floor. Beyond that rested the edge of the Manistee National Forest. Any thing could be out there.

          Or any one.

          To my left, more trees. Down the gravel road sat a single trailer with a shed and a boat covered in a blue plastic tarp, a summer fishing and hunting “cabin.” Or was it? That’s what my neighbor told me, and he is a former police officer. Former? I remember he was reluctant to tell me about that guy from Detroit. Maybe he made it up on the spot. Maybe he has been sworn to silence. He’s just like the rest of these people. Very hesitant to discuss private matters. All of are certainly concealing something.

          I stepped toward my front door and then stopped. I did not want to appear ready to bolt. There may be cameras. But I have a right, do I not, to go in and out of my own home? Of course I do. Still, I was beginning to put the pieces together. Surely the statute of limitations applies here. Maybe some federal sleuth had uncovered that military thing, those foreign events! Damn, I should have demanded written orders. I was so trusting. That was, what, 40 years ago?

          Still, I wondered. Maybe the feds had finally figured out I did not have real engine trouble when I landed on that narrow Florida road. You would think it was a federal crime or something with all the constabulary arriving from various jurisdictions. Lots of guns and lights and questions. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I grinned, thinking about it.  A perfect landing even with a cross wind. Perhaps someone that my reporting exposed or hurt or insulted was on the trail of revenge. It could be almost anyone since I was a reporter for a long time.

          Wait! What was that sound from over there? It is hard to mistake the sliding bolt of a powerful military weapon. Maybe a B.A.R., though it is a rare piece of equipment today. No, it would be more like an M-14 or maybe even an M-1 carbine. Once presented that sound once or twice, you know you will recognize it if you must.

          But why would the shooter be so sloppy as to make noise? It was a warning, that’s what it was. That metallic clatter designates the last prominent way to tell Roat he must duck and run. I have a friend out there.

          One thing I must do, I concluded, was to open the top envelope and perhaps discern the nature of the opponent. With fumbling fingers, I tore off the ends and folded it out.

          Notification that your dealership warranty is expiring or has currently expired! Call us immediately at … Those fake warranty people! They waste my cell minutes and send e-mail, too. My warranty expired five years ago, not last week. Could they now be armed and in cahoots with the feds? I went inside, but not without scanning the forest and roads one last time before quietly shutting my door. The warranty people are up to something.

Hunkering down in foreboding Michigan economy

            After about three miles, the road goes from paved – crushed stone poured on fresh tar, affectionately known as “tarvee” roads around here – to gravel, but it doesn’t matter all that much. Crews do an adequate job keeping gravel roads level and durable, which is saying something. Winter is seldom gentle here, though always magnificent, and the occasional 50-year rain can heartlessly destroy roads, as it did early last year.

            In this slice of the Midwest, you look skyward for hints of the future, good or bad. In one way or another, we all live within the weather’s margins.

            I had picked a beautiful day for this spur-of-the-moment urge – a crusade of sorts – to reintroduce myself to the back roads of Western Michigan. It’s not that I had forgotten Michigan. I grew up on and near Lake Michigan, its beaches, and its sand dunes, but 40 years ago I ventured elsewhere for jobs, eventually working in six other states. I returned recently and moved into a small house near Round Lake in Mason County. Here cable remains a tedious analog and the telephone too sluggish for DSL. Cell phones and wireless Internet counter that shift back in time, for which I am daily grateful.

            My reintroduction to the back roads does not tell you much. I know the roads. I know this part of Western Michigan fairly well. I spent way too much of my youth prodding and poking the woods, fields, and roads around here, an undaunted boy searching for a mystery to examine or malevolence to fathom. Pure of heart and anything but innocent, he feared only not knowing. That fear guided him the rest of his life.

            Today, I am due no purity or innocence, but I cannot help feeling the woods and fields entrap the unpolished purity and knowledge I seek. With that indefinable goal, I drove into the Manistee National Forest no longer guided by fear. One cannot find what I’m after if you are afraid of it before you find it.

Money and no money

            Detroit isn’t the only place suffering from unemployment. When the auto industry gets a cold, people all over Michigan start sneezing. You cannot drive 25 miles in this state without passing at least one company, large or small, supplying parts for cars and trucks.

            As the auto industry rolls into the abyss, people in all corners of the state discover they were living paycheck to paycheck. That reality finds its way into every restaurant, resort, dry cleaners, hardware store, and hair salon. Grocers close. Gasoline stations turn to gray and rust as grass materializes from cracks in the concrete. Small town pharmacies become junk shops.

            This part of Michigan, 250 miles northwest of Detroit, is best known for its almost pristine Lake Michigan beaches, fruit trees, a few dozen inland lakes, and forests. Those benefits do not obstruct financial collapse. As you drive around north of U.S. 10 and east of U.S. 31, you cannot help but see the deepening recession. Near our many lakes, every third cottage nears “shabbiness,” it’s homemade “for sale by owner” sign occasionally obscured by tall grass and weeds. It’s the same for residential homes sprinkled in lush fields along the road. An occasional house-in-progress has been halted with a roofed over basement. This basement “home” is almost a Michigan tradition of hunkering down and taking cover. Foliage covered piles of bull-dozed top soil and scrap wood concrete frames await better times. An increasing number of people offer campfire wood for $3 a bundle on roads used by people who gather their own wood in the backyard.

            You can’t spit out here without hitting an inland lake or a taxidermist. Sometimes both. Michigan has more than 11,000 lakes, not including the Great Lakes, and nearly as many rivers and streams. A man becomes very fond of these lakes not because most states do not have them but because we are all drawn to clean water. Our ancestors crawled from it. We were born in it. Our DNA demands it. We cannot live without it. With a little snickering, Michigan natives watch big city tourists flounder in it.

            Here, we also play in it. From a very young age this water philosophy becomes imbedded in our psyches. People around here own lots of boats – from canoes to Coho salmon fishing party boats – and talk about water activities so casually it sometimes takes you by surprise. Kayaks today are fashionable, too. Everybody swims, and nearly everyone fishes. You learn to bait a hook before you’re 7. Friday all-you-can-eat fish dinners serve deep-fried Great Lakes catches.

            But the tourist business – based mainly on this water – has truly suffered, especially in these back-country areas. Though originally the summer gathering places of the city well-off, these areas have become vacation spots for the working families, people who bear most of the weight of our economic malaise. Thus, the small town café, which expanded five years ago, no longer opens everyday and has not hired help in months. The bait shop stays open only because the owner has no idea what else to do. The corner laundry closed two years ago. After all, some businesses pull the short straw sooner than others. The auto industry has been staggering for years.

            People can endure the loss of a part-time job or reverting to an old wardrobe and driving the clunker for another year or so. What truly weigh on people are the vanished dreams. The kids may not go to college. The new house will not be. Doctor visits drop to only emergencies. The economy has robbed them of their visions and replaced them with delusions.

The anger

            Change is in the air, and so are fear and anger. Most people around here are hanging on, but many already seek out people and ideas to blame. I hear it often and stay clear for fear of unleashing even more anger and frustration – theirs and mine. You can see it in their sneers and smell it in the clothing fatigue. An old farmer in the produce section of the local grocery told two businessmen global warming is “bullshit,” a story made up to scare people and make them manageable. The international conspirators don’t scare him, though, he said. He says he’s ready for them, and I’ll bet he is.

            In the fast food “dining room,” a tall, long-haired late 50s man saw me reading Time magazine and sipping coffee. I had barely sat down. He raised his voice to cover the distance and informed me newspapers have gone into the toilet and news magazines will soon follow. It’s all part of the general demise of America, he told whoever would listen. Two others looked up at him and glanced at me, the target of his salvo. Keep all of us poorly informed, the man declared, and you can do anything in this country. I ignored him, as he started to tell someone passing him with a tray that he was about to eat Argentine beef. American beef is history.

            The man’s assessment of newspapers and magazines hits the mark. I agreed with everything, but I did not tell him so. I know more about that than he’ll ever know.

            I stopped for breakfast recently at what was then one of my favorite home-style restaurants. About 10 local men in their 50s had three tables end to end and talked brashly about their worries. I listened. They picked at their breakfast remains as one man loudly declared it was all the fault of “those damn niggers” in Washington.

            I could not ignore this. I slowly turned around to put a face to the comment. Everyone saw me and grew quiet, as though I’d somehow splashed water over the table or would start a fight. I had his face for memory, and he has mine, too. His face remains familiar just in case it appears over my shoulder or in the grocery line.

            I have not been back to that restaurant, and two friends asked why. The food is good and it’s a great location. Why punish the owner? He tolerates that kind of raucous hate and stupidity in the middle of his establishment, I explained. He’s one of them.

            The anger comes from fear of change they do not understand and, so far, feels like a threat to their way of life. Right Wing politicians toss gasoline on this fire almost daily. This cultural transformation emerges as un-American, foreign in initiation and content, so it becomes easy to talk about on the street. We would not do this to ourselves, right? We should have seen it coming. By God, we will see it next time, if we survive this.

 

            Much of it seems unfair. I like these people. They work hard. The Protestant Ethic surges through them. Over the years they have worked hard and steady and not gotten rich and endured some pretty harsh winters, but what is their reward? This experience challenges their trust. They have seldom trusted government – the institution constantly meddling in people’s lives – and now they are losing trust in almost everything else.

Survival

            Increasingly, it is all about riding out the economy, identifying bogus political ideas, trusting in the Lord, and surviving everything else.

            I visited a gun show some weeks ago to see if it is just like evil news media depict. The newest vehicle in visitors’ the parking lot was three or four years old. Most were pickups. A group of five stood smoking just outside the entrance doors and eyed those coming in and noting those leaving. They were friendly, though, suggesting I get a jacket. It was colder inside than out.

            They were right. The air conditioning ruled. About 60 people strolled through the largest field of handguns, shotguns, rifles, and ammunition I have seen since the army discharged me. Much of the display was military or pseudo-military. It would only require a smile, some small talk, and a pocket full of cash to buy one or two rifles capable of taking out people from a mile or so.

            The customers did not adorn fatigues or camouflage. They looked like people you might meet in the pharmacy. When you talked with them you did not conjure images of skin-heads and the final battle. But you could feel the uneasiness, their sense of an approaching unknown, the mystery that tomorrow always holds but this time may also be holding back its clues. They would not call it fear, but it has made them anxious. When civilization shakes violently, nothing good follows.

            “I don’t know how it will happen or how it will start,” one gun shop owner told me. “But you can feel it coming.” These people will be ready, and in being ready, they likely will become part of the problem we all must face. Some of us can peek far enough over the approaching horizon to see some of what they see. It sends a chill through you.

My abode

            I have been lucky enough to find a repossessed house the bank wanted off its hands. Isolated and in need of love and work, the house had languished long enough to drop thousands more in value.

            Such a house – somewhere between shabby and fragile – requires a learning curve. Today I know how to put up drywall, fix some plumbing, seal concrete, find a septic tank, calk cracks, install 12X12 tiling, and be grateful for clean well water and a rebuilt pump to deliver it. A nifty 300-gallon propane tank rests out my kitchen window, and an ancient, wall-mounted antique gas furnace blasts me regularly with hot air.

            Worse, I look forward to finding worn but recoverable book shelves, though I am likely to build my own. Boxes of books, remnants of a career of reporting, writing, professing, and thinking, remain in piles here and there. They will adorn my walls soon enough, I figure, and meanwhile they can hold the Earth in place until the snows come.

            A pile of Sunday New York Times and Wall Street Journals also await my attention, as well as a few items a friend sent to me. I am likely the only guy in the neighborhood with such a reading list. An optimist at heart, I hope to find two or three people I can argue philosophy with over plenty of coffee. Only a strange group would welcome a man who can explain “M Theory” well enough that members could point out its flaws. Now that’s a discussion.

            I do not see many people out here yet. A school bus passes by on the nearby tarvee road about 4 p.m. The UPS truck thunders down that road shortly after that but the driver seldom glances down my gravel road. Though I already suffer from too much reading, I might get big brown to come down my road if I found yet another book I need.

            As it is, three or four cars going by on the gravel road constitutes traffic which may need monitoring. Any more than four vehicles will require a stop light. I then would have to petition Mason County and get my neighbors’ signatures, if I had neighbors.

Who’s winning? Health insurance companies, the GOP, and the proud public relations profession

Having fun yet? How much do we love this twisted version of democracy brought to us by health insurance companies and their Republican beneficiaries?

You cannot turn on television without viewing slick commercials designed to scare the crap out of senior citizens. Even on the Weather Channel. If not those commercials, television instead presents videos of middle-aged operatives derailing intelligent discussions. They yell, scream, interrupt, override, and distort, all within the instructions sent to them by deeply moneyed interests.

You got to hand it to the health insurance companies. With their backs against the wall, they engaged the best public relations confidence men corporate dollars can buy. Rather than join an intelligent and overdue discussion on health insurance, these shysters designed a plan to push the entire discussion off the table. That’s the only way they will survive.

The plan is now apparent: Persuade Middle America those impostors in the White House aim to turn America into Russia. Tell senior citizens they will wait in line to die in the dark without doctors. Yeah, that’s it. And they will be cold, too. Convince all Americans some nameless government bureaucrat in Washington will decide if they receive tests or operations, where the tests will be provided, and how long pitiful Americans will wait to get them. Do not, through any means, remind them that a nameless health insurance bean counter now makes those decisions not based on improving your health but on whether that decision makes the company more money.

Overall, the public relations con men say, splash around phrases like “socialized medicine” and “socialism” at innocent Americans. Most citizens are too misguided to know what you’re talking about. Then when you get good ol’ Americans in a lather, tell them they must stop the “government takeover” of their personal health care. “Takeover” is a scary, sinister word, providing the delusion of conspiracy and violence. Again, do not, by any means, remind Americans they do not now control their personal health care. Corporate America controls it, and Corporate America intends to keep it with the help of misguided Americans like you.

In the end, Republicans will have campaign million$, Americans higher health care premiums, and the public relations profession another notch on its time-honored code of ethics.

‘Home security’ means a lot to Americans

The recent incident in Cambridge, Mass., where a white police sergeant arrested a black university scholar in his home, continues to fester a little in this country for various reasons. One of those reasons has roots in the American Revolution.

 

As you might recall, colonists became irritated when British troops would move into town. The troops would often walk into civilian homes without notice or warrant and tell the occupants to leave. Rather than pitch tents or build barracks, British troops would then take up residence – billet – in these citizens’ homes. Worse, the troops were there not to protect the colonists but to subdue them.

 

Especially as the mid-1770s approached, the British also believed it unnecessary to seek or use warrants to barge into American homes, arrest one or more of its occupants, and take the arrested away to mock courts, King- appointed judges, and counterfeit justice. Debate leading to the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration itself give you a fairly clear picture of American concern. Court decisions since then have added to an American sense of privacy in our homes, particularly against the intrusion of authority.

 

Simply put, Americans do not like any part of that. We like to believe we are safest in our own homes and that any aggression beyond the door must come with additional and appropriate justification. We also believe that whatever we might say to those in authority, within the bounds of our own homes, requires greater indulgence on the part of that authority.

 

To take a step back, most of us now understand Officer James Crowley to be a good man and a competent police officer. He arrived at Henry Louis Gates’ home ready – though not anxious – to put himself in harm’s way to enforce the law. That is his job. As a seasoned officer, however, he also must be ready to back away from insults and verbal jabs from a man being pressured in and rightly within his own home. Many state laws specifically state you can say some ugly things to police officers as long as it is not in public.

 

This sense of personal freedom is part of the American character. You may be black, Asian, white, or whatever, but you believe you have more latitude in your home, and you do. This is why some of us out here want to hear, before this completely disappears from the front page, that we retain that sense of guarded autonomy in our homes.

 

 

New decisions, rules face young adults

It is increasingly difficult to find our way in the world. That’s true especially for younger adults. I’m not talking about finding a book store or where to can get a massage. Any GPS gizmo can help with that, though an addiction to GPS creates a dependency that will disable a person’s innate ability to self navigate.

 

No, I’m talking about how many of the rules have changed, leaving today’s college kids, for example, more than a bit confused over how to decide education, professions, and jobs. While these are not necessarily “rules” — we can always do as we wish to do – there are patterns in life that help us decide what to do. Such as:

 

• Until recently a junior college said you need “training.” A four-year college said you need “an education.” The first is the how-to approach – how to be a police officer, nurse, computer technician, or auto mechanic – and the second steeps you in writing, math, social science, and languages. I have always urged the second approach, “an education,” but today much of that is up for grabs. Training will help you to simply “get a job” faster than liberal arts will show you how to think and give you intellectual depth. What are the rules today? More important, what do you want.

• While we’re at it, we all face the question of whether to prepare for a specific job or profession or, instead, gain a breadth of skills and knowledge about the working world. Again, I still believe the second will serve you better, but in this economy, few know for sure. Make sure that job will still be around when you get out of college. Today this is a frequent nightmare. Find someone who has his or her head on tight and get that person’s insight. Not me, folks. I don’t even like you people.

• So many students and young people in general want to stay “near home and family” when they graduate or enter the working world. Most of them are dolts. They sacrifice their freedom to determine their potential in order to stay close to family and “close” friends. If that works for you, great. Don’t complain about how limited the jobs are. I urge students and even high school graduates to pack a bag and go where the jobs are. You’ll never be that free again. Give yourself a chance to make something of yourself without meddlesome family “advice.”

• How long should you work a specific job? It used to be two or three years. Today a year or so. How much should you invest in that employer and that town? A six-month lease might be appropriate, and don’t buy a new car there.

• Speaking of investing, the short stay alters your loyalty to your employer and his loyalty to you, among other things. If you keep commitments short, that may work against you in the future. Why should a future employer invest in training or rewards?

• What about that work ethic thing? Questions abound since it appears the work ethic is on the ropes. Until recently, a worker felt a defined responsibility to show up on time, work reasonably hard, and not whine about just being one of the workers. Today many young workers see the need only to work hard enough to survive and move on. They feel abused if the employer does not commend them for showing up. Visualize party hats and monthly banquets.

• I could never understand why people right out of college worried about health insurance. What catastrophe is likely? What a waste of good money. But today, since Washington struggles everyday about how to build a health care system that makes sense, you might wait longer to buy. On the other hand, an increasing number of employers are dropping their expensive employee health care insurance plans. Almost everything has changed. The rest is about to change.

 

Millions of young people face simple but potentially catastrophic decisions about who to listen to. Their wise parents and family members will tell them to stick to the old rules because those rules served generations well. To me, that view presents an unsupportable sweeping generalization as well as poor memories. They did follow those rules, but the rules only served an empowered minority.

 

Those paying attention to the current situation and its implications will suggest other approaches to life decisions. More to the point, they might remind those listening the rules are evolving. Period. Pay attention. Also know you are not indispensable.

 

Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke helped

On this 40^th anniversary of the moon landing, one of the coolest things I remember of that event was a discussion Walter Cronkite set up. He invited the three greatest science fiction writers – Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke – to a round table chat about the meaning of man’s first journey to another celestial body.

 

I sat completely absorbed. I knew these men. I had spent much of my growing years reading everything written about World War II, the best science fiction, and the great writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck. It was unusual to see me without a book or two, even in the Army where I reluctantly sat in 1969 spellbound by Apollo 11.

 

Once assembled, the three men talked as though no one else was in the room. They had no peers, except perhaps Ray Bradbury and maybe even, in a stretch, Walter Cronkite himself. The writers knew Apollo 11 was the first step in what everyone at the time believed to be many, propelling us to other planets and eventually out of the solar system. What would take us there? Our imagination and desire to know. Science would provide the means. Wernher von Braun’s brain may have designed the team and science that put men on the moon, but these three men could tell us why we did it and where we go next.

 

These men were not just writers, they were thinkers. As you know, Heinlein wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land, two books I need to read again. Asimov wrote more than 500 books, but today’s readership might know him quickly by mentioning he wrote I, Robot. The questions he raised in his robot series remain pertinent. And Clarke, who died about a year ago, is best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Few remember that in his spare time he proposed, designed, and promoted a satellite communication system. It seemed a reasonable goal to him. Of course, that was 1945, and we didn’t begin to put it all together until the 1970s. Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles.

 

They’re all gone now, the three science fiction writer-thinkers as well as the god of journalism, Walter Cronkite. And I know we have lots of problems to solve here on Earth, and we have people to heal and diseases to conquer, but, yes, I’d like this country to start thinking seriously about going to Mars. It will be totally cool.

Consumer protection? Really? Don’t kid me

Dear Mr. President:

 

This week I sent Bank of America a $30 check for a credit card account I closed last month when I sent those folks a check for $142.03, my complete balance. A bit put off by the interest rate, I intended to close the account. But, as I should have predicted, my payment arrived a day late.

 

Oh, dear.

 

Bank of America must have been deeply distressed by this, what with all the drudgery bank personnel would have to endure given my tardiness, so they added a $29 punishment late pay fee to $1.50 interest. A bank must make money somehow, especially after it accepted handouts from the United States just to keep a heart beat. Consumers always compose a handy repeat target after already mismanaging their money. Yeah, I know. You’re right. I also feel suitably grief-stricken for the troubles I must have put this bank through being a day or two late. Sure, perhaps it required overtime.

 

This is why I am very pleased you suggest a consumer protection division be added to the new official financial regulation program you outlined today. We need such an office almost everywhere, but let’s stick with this one right now. I’m sure you realize that consumer protection has been out of fashion for quite a while. It’s possible no one in Washington these days has much experience with it. Look outside Washington. You’ll need two or three years before any consistent evil surfaces, and in the meantime the Republicans will be anxious to close protection offices. They’ll say those do-gooders are making life difficult for our delightful and friendly bankers, so we should close consumer protection offices.

 

Do not listen to them. Don’t compromise with them. Don’t invite them into the tent for coffee. They really do not like protecting consumers. I know this from professional experience. They see it as the ultimate menacing regulation and a waste of taxpayers’ money. On the other hand, remember Elizabeth Dole? She was in Richard Nixon’s Administration and did some good work on consumer protection. Nixon was a bit distracted at the time.

 

I’m sorry I waxed on here, Mr. President. I wanted to keep this short, but the subject – a rather new one considering the subject’s infirmity – caught my attention. American consumers truly need protected. We are an unpretentious, trusting lot. We simply desire a decent product or service for a reasonable price. We like it when contracts make sense in few words. We feel cheated when advertising lies to us. And we hate it when businesses, such as banks, take advantage of us. I know these customer yearnings present obstacles to vibrant businesses, but let us hope the enemies of consumer protection do not suffocate these efforts for at least four or five years.

 

Good luck creating such offices. Opponents are already taking aim at you for this.

 

Sincerely,

Ron Roat

 

P.S. By the way, I mailed this new payment to the bank late, too. It would be worth it if I thought for a second some overpaid banker had to cut lunch short just to handle my tardiness, but I’m sure it’s just one of those things.

 

Good reporters don’t take shortcuts

A former student directed me to a Web site where a reporter had asked the public to identify nearby General Motors car dealers that did not receive the “nice” letter from GM and rat out those unlucky dealers. You remember this mess last week: General Motors would no longer supply them cars or honor their franchises as the giant corporation marches toward bankruptcy.

 

The reporter wanted to talk with them. With the public hunting down those dealerships – doing the reporter’s job – the reporter could multi-task in full efficiency by not tracking them down himself and, instead, spend more time on the phone with sorry and sad dealers.

 

My former student couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she suspected this was not good journalism.

 

She’s right, of course (she was well taught), but it is not obvious, especially in these times. While reporters should hunt down their own news sources – and a series of quick phone calls from a phone book would do the trick – news rooms today are not overstaffed. Reporters are getting hard to come by, and those are probably overloaded with fascinating, deeply penetrating stories about new creative ideas from the chamber of commerce or jolly insights addressing spring gardening. Besides, a story about painfully upset car dealers hurts the town’s booster club image of a thriving, American dream community. In that environment, who would blame him for shoving this small duty upon the public?

 

Me, of course. One of the fundamentals the public wants from news outlets – and the public probably could not identify this fundamental were it asked – is that the reporter make his or her own selections of sources. It’s part of that objectivity thing the public hopes the reporter follows. Though it is not an “always” thing, a good reporter will search widely when looking for good sources.

 

The cool thing here, from my experience, is that it is always a rewarding experience to call and find a new source. The source gives you a response different enough from other sources that you, the reporter, look like a genius by finding him. Good reporters want varied responses for news stories. Editors love it. Readers get more interested. Varied responses make people ruminate. Love that word, ruminate. I like ruminating, too, and I miss it.

 

It is difficult to imagine that reporters have a “hit list” of dealerships they want to punish, keeping those secret lists under their desk calendars waiting for such an opportunity. Oh, boy, now I get to get back at that nasty truck dealer.

 

Well, I would like to go on about journalism’s objectivity, but I just heard that the recent American Idol vote may have been rigged. What an outrage! This development has so upset and hurt me that I can hardly think straight or stay awake.

Policy? POLICY? Word covers all evils

I stepped right up to the window, my papers in my hand, and announced myself. I said I was to be at the Procedure Center at 8:30. I was 20 minutes early. She typed into the computer and seemed mesmerized by what it reported to her.

“May I have your birth date?” I gave it to her.

“Can you confirm your address, please?”

I considered answering “yes” to the straightforward question – I can confirm my address – but instead I gave her my address. Then I explained I’d driven 520 miles for the enjoyment of this procedure and I could not imagine why anyone might sneak up behind me, knock me on my head, steal my identity, and arrive here today pretending to be me so he could get a colonoscopy. She should simply take me at my word I was and remain myself.

She forced a laugh, showing she did not understand anything, not even the funny part.  “Well, yes,” she said, “but we need to make very sure who you are, so our policy is we must check.” Then she asked if I had insurance, and I handed her my cute little card with blue writing on it.

“That information is in your system,” I said. “My policy is to remind you of that fact in order to confirm I am me and that I’m in the right clinic.”

That little interchange earlier this week confirmed what I’ve always known and often taught to my journalism students: People heap all sorts of make-believe authority on what they call “policy,” intending us to follow their directives or understand at least why the company cannot in any way be generous or cut us some slack. Policy sinks down through officialdom’s many layers to the bottom where a minion announces it to the intended object to be handled, subdued, and sometimes ridiculed.

“Oh, well,” we’re trained to say, “since it is your policy, then, gee, I guess I should not object to being treated this way. It’s The Policy.” We should indeed be on the watch for idiots wanting to steal someone else’s colonoscopy even though that sounds more like lunacy than sound management.

Many policies confront us. I once had to sign a release form to permit my daughter to play softball. In simple terms, it said that no matter what happened to my daughter, it was my fault, not theirs. I simply could not find blame elsewhere. I declined to sign it. The league’s potentate called me that day and told me a lawyer had written it. I told him I felt my bowels getting loose now that I knew a lawyer had written it. He understood the sarcasm but said if I didn’t sign it, my daughter would not play. It was the league’s policy. So I signed it but also included a letter outlining my objections to the release, even if (maybe especially) since a lawyer wrote it. I believed then as I do now that I had established an argument for an objection later if needed. Screw the policy.

The theater ticket policy tells you that it is not the theater’s responsibility for anything you leave there or is stolen while you are there, or any harm that might come to you while there. It is all bunk. The theater’s policy is to appear oblivious to activity within its walls. However, if it has not acted prudently to protect the safety of its customers against obvious hazards, then the theater is indeed likely responsible. That’s the law’s policy.

The clerk behind the fast-food counter asks if we want cheese with that even though we’ve said nothing about cheese in our brief conversation. He says the restaurant’s policy is to ask. After all, we remember, damn near everything comes with a 40-cent layer of cheese in order to get more money from our pockets. It’s the company policy to put something into the meal to force customers to tell them to remove it or pay for it, an act that apparently requires various jabs at the cash register often performed with obvious impatience.

A moving company tells you that the moving industry’s policy is to require a third down on the estimate. Every company follows the policy. That’s another way of saying that trucking industry abuses its customers – all its customers – in the same way and, therefore, every company is virtuous and above ridicule.

That’s bunk, too. Equality in mistreatment does not forgive or erase the exploitation even if the mistreatment is “industry policy.”

High end of the power curve – avoid it

He was right, of course. But how do you free yourself of such a demanding cycle?

It was years ago, and I was sitting in front of Brian, a psychologist. Brian had been talking with me weekly for perhaps three months, and he would talk with me for another three months, give or take. I was the Dayton Consumer Advocate, the man who ran a 15-investigator office which enforced a fistful of laws. It was a public and stressful job, but I loved it. I also was good at it.

Like me, Brian was a pilot, and he used the process of taking off as a metaphor to explain my life. He said I lived at the high end of the power curve – when the engine runs at full tilt as always on takeoff. Instead of patiently waiting for the proper speed (when lift would be swift and not burdened with extra drag), I try to pull it off the runway early. The higher you pull the airplane’s nose, the more awkward a presentation the plane makes to the air. This increases drag, a force acting against thrust.

          The worst part of this madness occurs at the high end of the power curve. The drag and thrust fall into balance. The plane does not climb, but you soon run out of runway.

          “And there you are, in your impatient life,” Brian said, as best I can remember. “Holding the yoke with sweaty hands, you pull it off the runway too early, pulling the plane up before it wants to. Push, pull, push because you can fix anything, right any misdeed. Hell, you even defy the laws of physics. You’re the consumer advocate.”

That’s when I learned Easy Hands. Easy Hands helps you keep some sense of calm while learning to be independent in this frustrating world. If you want to become self-reliant, you must first learn to control yourself.

Chill out, relax, calm down, take it easy, settle down, calm yourself, take it easy, take a breather, take five, time out.

Returning to the airplane … if you keep a tight grip on something, such as an airplane yoke, you won’t fly well. You’ll tire out, build stress, and get irritable. Worse, you won’t enjoy flying, which is vital.

          Many situations call for Easy Hands. You must use Easy Hands riding a motorcycle, for example. Hold it firmly enough that you do not lose your control at the next bump but easily enough so your hands, wrists, and arms do not become weary. That’s how you enjoy the ride, too. You let your sense of balance, your mental ability at quick geometry, and your instincts take over.  Enjoy it and stay safe.

          Many approaches to living call for Easy Hands, too. You cannot lead or influence others if you cannot inspire confidence and calm within yourself first. After all, would you want to ally yourself with someone who nearly flaunts stress and irritability? Over management builds on itself and drains you of willpower. The more you try to control something, the harder it becomes to exercise that control. Eventually you squander whatever personal progress you have made.

          Easy Hands applies to love, too. If you control and manipulate your mate, you will lose her. Your mate seeks self-definition, too, and that definition should not be passive. Build self-sufficiency and confidence within yourself, and your strengths will give her good reason to remain at your side.

          Easy Hands should be your only guide when you face big decisions, stressful choices, and vital friendships. Even hate.

Fear of authenticity lurks among us

I was talking to a bookstore manager as she took care of another customer’s purchase.  A fairly quiet woman about my age, she and I had been talking about the authors of various books, especially the political and cultural analyses of the last few years. I “sort of” apologized for being straight-forward. Most people don’t take it very well, I said.

“I wish people were more blunt,” she said quietly so as not to be heard beyond the cash register. “We could use it these days.”

And there it was, a glaringly contemporary illness most of us suffer, an illness designed to shut down the exchange of sincere versions of the truth. In other words, we teach one another to keep our mouths shut. If we must talk, and I suppose we must, then we instruct one another to at least take the edges and perhaps the meaning out of our comments.

Why? We don’t want to offend someone, make someone feel uncomfortable, or engage in meaningful dialogue. We desire to deceive one another. How else can you define this brainless, laughable way to communicate with one another?

            This fear of authenticity has burdened us for a long time. Remember that cute, mindless comment from Thumper? “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”

I doubt most of us desire to live in a world where truth is cast aside in favor of The Thumper Principle. I picture a grey-haired, wrinkly old, old woman promoting Thumperness, but that’s unfair to my late grandmother. She might offer a brief reprimand for bluntness, but then the former suffragette would have a plenty to say that would make fragile weenies uncomfortable. I come from good stock.

            As a newspaper editor, I received an occasional complaint about the direct coverage of some news stories, such as bodies floating around following a tidal wave.  One woman said that dampened the dinner table discussion. Just what should an editor say to these people? “Oh, gee, madam, I’m so sorry. I’ll reshape our news coverage so you need not fear being uncomfortable. Thank you for bringing this concern to my attention.” Nope. I said she should not read the newspaper without first having two fingers of whiskey. I transferred her to the circulation department and said she should consider dropping the newspaper.

            You can imagine how a modern editor would not appreciate a Roat response when newspapers can barely pay the light bill. On the other hand, people in the paper today still “die.” They don’t pass on or pass away or somehow get caught up in any other euphemism for death. The newspaper is one of the last bastions of lucid reporting.

            All of this is important to you. If you become a carrier of the Thumper virus, do not fear hospitalization or prolonged illness. Instead, fear your slow loss of self, a loss of a speaker of truth as you see it, and an eventual submission to those around you who desire to control your point of view.

            But, alas, grandmothers, children, and weenies will adore you for being painfully nice.

Privacy? Not for administrators of public agencies

Recently a former journalism student told me about the trouble he’s having with university officials who are shocked – shocked – when a reporter calls, gets some information, prints it, and then quotes the university official. Shocked? Yes, they are shocked their accurately spelled names appeared right there in the paper, right there with the information they provided without objection.
What an outrage! Administrators accurately quoted in the newspaper! Alarm! Alarm!
While that seems a bit odd for 2008 – I thought we were working on a more transparent culture – the layer of this observation that rattles my cage is that administrators’ defend their shock by telling reporters they have the right to privacy.
Privacy?
Yes, I know, though the right to privacy is not in the U.S. Constitution, we believe the roots of privacy grow there and subsequent court decisions have added wordage.
But let me examine this from another perspective – our expectations of state-funded college administrators. We create universities so our youth can be educated (another series of topics coming soon). We hire administrators to manage these schools, which are dear to us as well as expensive for us. These managers are public servants in state institutions. Their weighty decisions can enhance or degrade the college academic offerings, make everyone look silly for hiring them, and threaten the financial bottom line.
Give me a reason they should not freely identify themselves. They work for the public and do manage millions of dollars, our universities, our hopes, and our future.
Privacy? No. Too much is at stake. If you want privacy, work for a private company and build a big fence around your suburban house.
Better defenses for hiding their public-funded identities might include incompetence, fear of attention, and a general need to be cuddled before being revealed. But my general sense as a journalist and professor is this unfounded public administrator “privacy” thing is already out of control, and, worse, it suggests a larger cultural error in navigation. Eventually, we will not know who does what on our behalf.

Please let them grow up and experience their own lives

During a recent class exercise, a middle school teacher told an acting out student that he was being childish. In fact, she told him he was a “child.”

You should be able to predict the 2008 reaction since most of you are products of the last 30-some years of socializing. The kid and his parents said he ran home (I’ll bet he got a cab) and , with obvious emotional distress, said his teacher called him a child. He felt embarrassed and “uncomfortable.”

In the 1960s you could tell a child he was a child, even with some emphasis, and no one would have cared. In 1960, children were supposed to be embarrassed, confused, and uncomfortable. They were children. If the middle-schooler continued to whine about it, parents sent him to his room to experience his own drama without dragging in others.

This was true even into the early 1970s before the Nurturing Culture zealots claimed to know much more than the rest of us about emotions. When they assumed protection and management of our emotions, everything fell in line.

One zealot posse, worried about embarrassment, slipped away to write complex political correctness rules. Another zealot subcommittee, convinced their interpretation of the Constitution was correct, created lists of things people can no longer do to others. The main thing people can no longer “commit” upon another is make someone uncomfortable.

Oh, gosh, the shame of it all. Imposed discomfort.

Can you imagine a world where we made one another uncomfortable without a klatch of volunteer humanitarians arriving suddenly to share feelings, seek consensus, form support groups, and try to make the “offender” appear criminal?

The largest do-gooder cluster of the 1970s takeover decided to reshape American education where “uncomfortableness” (if there is such a word) lurked everywhere. Kids were uncomfortable because other kids pestered them. No more of that. We’ll suspend you and threaten your completion. Kids were uncomfortable because their teachers physically got too close, used anxiety-generating red ink on their papers, and told them things they did not want to hear, like the difference between a classic novel and a comic book. After all, teachers should not be instructing. They should be guiding students or searching for potential sexual harassment possibilities.

Higher education had a different set of discomforts, and we’ll discuss that set another time.

Meanwhile, back to the wicked middle school teacher. Her situation forced the Nurturing Culture to “take specific measures” to make sure this outrage would not occur again. They held late afternoon meetings filled with passive acts: The acting out student was identified but ignored, notes were taken, the offending teacher assessed, an apologetic letter to the parents drafted, a memo to the teacher’s file assigned, and a new rule written. Does anyone really want to work in that environment?

All this activity occurred because parents — brought up during the Nurturing Culture’s formative years — believe that robbing children of their own experiences, reactions, and emotional growth is preferable to letting poor Johnny work a few things out for himself. They choose to forget that we learn more when things go wrong than when they go right.

Sure, let’s make sure to protect little Johnny’s inflated view of himself. Let him run into the real world later where mommy won’t be there to rescue him, his emotional collapse will amuse some and disgust others, and he will try to recover from an adolescent conflict while an adult. Right. Yeah, let’s do one more thing: Keep them home, living in the parents’ basements, for fear they must fend for themselves out there and pay their own bills.

No, here’s a better idea. Think of your children as people to teach AND protect. Educate them on the pitfalls of growing up, then coach them how to handle the tough ones. Do not shield them from their own mistakes. Help them learn the difference between casual, irrelevant affronts and those with substance.

Otherwise, you perpetuate 2008.

Socialism? Think it through at least once

This has been an ugly presidential campaign, especially here in the last week. Almost everyone knows that. But I have been surprised at one relatively new charge that has been floating around for months but currently more intense.

And that is members of the John McCain campaign, as well as some idiotic television news interviewers, “accusing” people of being socialists. I’d make fun of that because it needs a lot of poking, but what surprises me every time is that most Americans have no idea what socialism is. This is especially true among those making the “accusations” on the subject.

 

These people are very poor at remembering. Anybody remember Lockheed? That’s a fine example of two-country socialism at work saving an aircraft company from facing free market capitalism. Another is the U.S. Government loan to Chrysler Corporation to keep the company alive and well rather than let free market capitalism decide the company’s future.

 

Those are giant events. Ongoing examples – Medicare, Social Security, farm price supports – should keep most Americans honest on the subject. But, alas, these people are unaware of how socialism economic philosophy has helped us. I am particularly surprised when farmers, for example, tell us all about the benefits of free enterprise when most of them would have gone broke were it not for government-managed subsidies. That’s called farmer welfare.

 

Many corporations, when moving from City A to City B, request or get something called “tax abatement.” That is the process of eliminating taxes like property taxes to encourage the company to land in City B. That’s a form of government assistance to corporate America that doesn’t fall under capitalism or free market.

 

When my students would decry socialism – and I encouraged vast discussions in intro to mass communication – I’d casually ask how they got to the university. You could see on their faces, The highway, stupid. Who built it? Did you have to pay a few tolls to cross the city on private roads? No. Was your tuition here like those of private colleges? No. Do you object if Indiana taxpayers help pay your tuition or would you prefer to leave higher education to supply and demand of the market? No.

 

We should not decry socialism when, in the past 30 days, the U.S. Government has bought massive shares of banking, investment, and insurance companies in order to save them from bankruptcy. Now who is a socialist? All American taxpayers.

 

Stay tuned. It’s about to get a lot more interesting. But I am only talking to those who think for themselves, not those who have tune into talk radio to get their instructions. It’s important for all of us not to fall into lock-step stupidity designed by the dogmatic for the weenies.

Economic decisions reflect our values

 

I’m teaching again, in this blog this time.

This time it is about the coming choices we, as taxpayers and voters, will make to get our economy back to where we like it. What’s significant here is that you can learn a lot about a culture and a country by the choices it makes during times of stress and chaos. It reveals our values.

Trust me, sociologists, economists, political scientists, and journalists all over the country are watching us closely and taking good notes. Also, advertising researchers are finding ways to sell you things you don’t need when you have even less money to spend. And they’ll find those ways.

 

We will make our own choices in many areas and in numerous ways. Each of us might be aware of our personal decisions – or maybe not. Because of the increase in gas prices (now falling, soon to rise again), we make fewer trips, drive fewer miles, and vacation closer to home. We might turn the heat down, replace old bulbs with green bulbs, and finally add insulation to the attic.

 

Researchers already know a lot of that, but they keep weekly logs of mileage, heat bills, and such. They also know, to the tenth of a cent, how much we spend on shoes, diapers, cleaning fluids, oil changes, and a thousand other things that indicate how we respond. Do we as Americans seek a dozen or two simple changes in our lives and hope for the best? Or, do we sit and discuss permanent changes in lifestyles, and what changes do we contemplate?

 

All these activities define our values better than almost any other test.

 

Researchers are also monitoring governments – local, state, and federal. What programs do our leaders – remember, we elected them – let go, what do they keep, and why? How will that change our lives?

 

This is a common example, but I’ll use it anyway. Many of us condemn local school boards when, in tough economic times, the boards decide to drop fine arts, theater, music, and the band/orchestra but keep the losing high school football program. I think the boards exercise stupidity when they do that. However, don’t forget we elected them (in most states), and the boards had to cut some program because local taxpayers voted “no” on school tax increases. Where’s the responsibility?

 

A few years ago, Michigan voters elected a governor who promised to cut taxes. He cut taxes, and everyone lived happily ever after. No, happily ever after didn’t happen. State services declined. Highway cracks became potholes. Eventually some roads crumbled, and the governor had to look for other employment opportunities.

 

Taxpayers got exactly what they voted for, but few of them connected the original vote to reduce taxes to the declining state services. The situation just seemed unfortunate to them.

 

Anyone compiling those votes can make on-target observations about the taxpayers’ values.

 

So why should I write about this? First, your decisions reflect you to others and, interestingly, to yourself. Hard times might force you to focus. Second, pay attention to the world around you. As others make decisions, those decisions reflect their core values, and if you use that stuff between your ears, you’ll discover patterns that will help you soon be a step ahead of those around you.

We’ve waited patiently for this day 40 years

If you know anything about ethics and journalists, you know journalists try to be objective. But it is difficult and a topic for another day, perhaps. Nonetheless, ethicists frown when reporters, for example, have political bumper stickers, wear campaign pins, or serve on a local political committee. No political sign in the front yard, either. The same is true, more or less, with professors, who should avoid politics in the classroom. But,as you might guess, some of us find that stressful. Even so, I have been trying to moderate if not hide my political point of view for more than 40 years.

 

Enough is enough.

 

I have political signs in my front yard as I type this. I detest wearing pins (I hate most hats, too, in case it matters). My motorcycle features an Obama/Biden sticker, and the sticker has only gotten me into one argument, that with a very old hunter waiting for me to return from the grocery store. He used the “n” word, among some others, and I should have stopped him and discussed not politics but how many brain cells he has left, did he create his own political stance or get it from Rush Limbaugh, and can he survive the political change coming down the tracks?

 

No, I’m trying to be nice more than I used to be. I just told him he was going to loose the election despite his insights.

 

A newspaper editor interviewed me about two weeks ago and asked my political view, as though she needed to be told. I said I live now where conservative knuckle-draggers rule and think everyone is afraid of them. I don’t want to get into arguments with people too stupid to understand what they say. Nothing to be gained there. But I told the newspaper editor that Republicans and conservatives (the same thing since Ronald Reagan’s pronouncements) better pull their seat belts tight because they’re in for a hell of a ride. The pendulum Reagan pushed to the right has stopped. As it comes back, it will go even further left and longer than FDR’s push 75 years ago.

 

And I can’t wait.

 

For 40 years I’ve had to listen to clean cut, self-righteous Republicans point a finger at me and call me a “liberal,” as though I should tremble and scurry into the dark. That usually sparked nasty discussions, if you can call such a thing a discussion, and ended with hurt feelings – their feelings. I had a lot of fun with them because they expect everyone to become terrified of being called a liberal – as McCain and Palin tried to do this recently – and are not prepared for someone with confidence, a brain, knowledge that eclipsed their talk radio instructions, and a disinclination to be stampeded by their scare tactics and threats.

 

But I admit it was work and a waste of time. The power? Simply decline to be bullied.

 

Nonetheless, pompous right-wingers have not sensed yet we’ve not only been organizing and waiting, but they, meanwhile, have been pissing in their own yard so often even their friends hesitate to play. Republicans started by tossing moderates and liberals out of the GOP, and then demanding a dangerous political partition among Americans. Young people today believe that division has always been there. Nope. It was a Reagan stroke of preeminence.

 

Then they invited into the “big GOP tent” all evangelicals and those who believe they found god. I have not missed them for a second. Has anyone missed them? They included many southern Democrats, anyone who likes war, most people who believe godliness is a litmus test to be human, and particularly people who made a lot of money. They formed a posse and began to look for people to abuse. They raised taxes on the middle class, reduced taxes on the rich, pushed religion on communities, built a mighty military, ruined our relations with dozens of friendly countries, and set up meaningless tests for school children. The GOP reduced entitlement programs, tried to put Social Security into the “safety” of the stock market, and legislated against business regulation. Instead of helping people, they talked endlessly about “empowering” people (while sifting their pockets). They talked loudly about the evils of big government while building the largest government we’ve ever seen.

 

But here’s the best part. We gladly thank George W. Bush for being such an idiot from the very start that he knocked down his own walls. He started an unnecessary, expensive, tragic war with a country no threat to the United States. Meanwhile, he avoided the right war in Afghanistan. He wiretapped Americans. He started lists of suspected traitors (I made the academic sublist early). He made Richard Nixon look like a misbehaving choir boy. So, thanks George, for being the best thing that’s happened to the conservative movement. You ended it. We would have seriously considered impeachment were it not for the scary, sinister man who would replace you. Bush’s final salute was never understanding economics and pushing bankrupt economic philosophies. Thank you again.

 

Normally I’m not all that concerned about people who scare easily and consistently. If they decide to spend their lives running from GOP bogymen, perhaps they should run. I like how the mere mention of socialism or Muslims or taxes or – you name one – panic these slow-thinkers. It would be hilarious were it not so serious.

 

But even they have become reluctant to spook again. They’re not scared anymore. They’re hurt, insulted, and pissed. Telling us our taxes will be increased doesn’t work. The invented threat of Muslims under our beds died from lack of fear. The GOP threw bullshit all over us, but not much stuck. Americans have changed. They’ve acquired backbone right on time, just before America’s national election, an event which will prove America can run an intelligent voting process to show the world.

 

The country’s future does not belong to the scared, hurt, or antagonistic. It belongs to the the self-reliant, the confident, the visionary. It belongs to leaders who see less money on the horizon than they do human opportunity.

 

We insulate ourselves from our lives

It’s hard to tell how our Founding Fathers would have responded to the idea of political correctness. But we can suspect our Founders’ reaction would be a combination of confusion and outrage. All the trouble they went through to create a free environment and we trample it because someone’s feelings might get scratched.

Their reaction to free speech zones would have been a total flabbergast. In the 1790s they insulted one another with the most contemptuous phrases. They held nothing back, accusing each other of thievery, skulduggery, having sex with animals, being doddering old fools, conniving with the country’s enemies, and having been parented by agents of the devil.

Then they would meet, have lunch, and build the most powerful democracy the world has ever seen. They didn’t worry much about their feelings. Instead, they worried about accomplishments and results.

Today many of us fuss over feelings. We know that words hold power and can hurt. Psychologists and political correctness officiants believe if we change the language, we can transform the people who speak the words as well as soften the blow on those who hear it.

It’s all part of the growing “nicyniceness” trend of the Nurturing Culture. We must become sensitive to the difficulties and drama the people around us seem to have all the time. We make sure there are only winners. No one, apparently, should feel bad about losing. We’re told to cut back on the insults. We make sure job descriptions do not cause people to feel badly about their jobs and self worth. We make sure even our soldiers, who are trained to kill people, will not experience undue stress in their jobs. What an awful thought.

Many schools today are so sensitive they toss red grading pens away and replace them with “friendly” purple pens so as not to aggravate the failure some stressed students complain about. I can barely write these words without having to push back the tears. In some parts of the country, not to anyone’s particular surprise, parents sue school systems because the schools’ practice of posting good grades and praising accomplished students is making their precious children feel badly about themselves. Elsewhere a group of American school teachers want the word “failure” removed from the grading system and the phrase “deferred success” inserted. So, even when schools try to do the right thing, weak-minded parents and weenie teachers loudly complain their dolt kids feel bad. To prevent the lip quivers of intelligence-challenged kids, school boards buckle.

OK, now we can stop holding back. Go ahead and laugh.

This stupidity would be funny were it not so mindless. Actually, it is funny. Instead of guiding and helping their children to become adept, these parents and teachers reward children for falling short just like getting a trophy for losing a T-ball game. They shield the children from the effects of their action or inaction (spreading “nicyniceness” everywhere). They are not doing their children a good turn.

Today each of us lives in a cocoon designed to protect us from harm and insult. Instead of making us better people, the cocoon has made us emotionally fragile and intellectually feeble. We fear the marketplace of ideas and all its unpredictable twists and turns. (Why not just accept intellectual direction from the local evangelical minister? It’s a lot easier.) We dread a world of stress. We avoid the responsibility of our own actions by doing away with the outcomes, our best instructors. Discipline and the structure it provides us has been the main casualty of our worry about feelings.

We may build our cocoons to make the world a better place, but the cocoons’ skin has prevented us from experiencing our lives. It is long past time to poke holes in our crusty shells and breathe the sweet air of existence.

Higher education hip deep in minaūtiae studiī

 

Communication researchers yearly produce an array of useless research, and that process tells us plenty about higher education in general.

Scholars and disinterested parties can buy copies of these papers at the annual gathering of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication held in late summer or early fall. Often an Associated Press or Reuters’ reporter wanders through the “research room” to pick up copies of these reports for a possible story about them. These news stories do not get many readers, but in many newsrooms, the stories earn plenty of laughter. Research of trivia might as well be about another planet. It would make more sense then.

This is modern social science research, the product of thousands of graduate students in the social sciences. This group includes communication researchers.

The foundation philosophy of this activity goes like this: If you can’t measure it, then you can’t count it. If you can’t count it, then you cannot verify that it exists and to what degree it exists. If you cannot verify it, then it doesn’t exist, at least in the world of modern scholarly research. If it doesn’t exist, scholarship cannot address it, and if scholarship cannot address it, then professors will ignore it. If professors ignore it, they won’t write textbooks about it or teach it. Instead, they teach basically what can be measured or counted and made into graphs.

Unfortunately, the critical focus of education should be creativity and insight, two ideas impossible to measure or count. The modern American academy, however, focuses essentially on topics professors can measure, count, and corroborate. If they study those topics, their study and “important” writings will get them advanced degrees, professional recognition, and good teaching positions. As a colleague professor recently told me, “Those things which can be measured and tested get rewarded (by the university). So those things indeed get done.” Good riddance to everything else, it seems.

So, instead of teaching, these research professors write penetrating analytic papers for “refereed journals” and present them with elaborate charts at conferences. Their colleagues nod approvingly and become agog with jealousy, even though hardly anyone will read these cutting-edge papers on media trivia. Each professor’s research shows him to be a leading educator worthy of promotion and perhaps deserving university-paid assigned time to further explore the depths of this astonishing discovery. The dean might even reward him by cutting teaching hours or eliminating them altogether.

After all, this is all about the academy projecting an image to potential students and anxious donors. This research makes the university appear to be a house of knowledge, a cathedral of scholarship, a worthy place to send our brightest children to be taught by someone other than the Great Scholars.

Meanwhile, it is bizarre this professor wanted to be a teacher but avoids teaching. Even more peculiar is the university hires him (or her, of course) to attract good students, then rewards him by rescuing him from the classroom. With some skilled overwriting, the scholar might convince a foundation to offer a large grant so the scholar can continue his “critical work,” add his work “to our great body of knowledge,” and never burden himself with teaching again.

If you can’t measure it, then you can’t count it. If you can’t count it, then you cannot verify it exists and to what degree it exists. If you cannot verify it, then it doesn’t exist. Or does it? If it did exist, where would we look for it? How would we detect it? Students might find these questions more useful.

In defense of Sarah Palin

 

Silly me, I take my profession seriously. I’d like it to take itself seriously, too, and not abuse people with its power.

 

So it is with some concern I’ve watched the national media – particularly cable news channels – abuse the hell out of a relatively short piece of video showing Sarah Palin blathering on and on and on a few moments after rescuing one large turkey from hundreds being slaughtered for Alaskan dinner tables. Palin was just performing her gubernatorial duties, but she sought the spotlight a little too long. Her unprepared “speech” just happened to be videotaped against the backdrop of turkeys being beheaded, drained, and moved off stage. The contrast between Palin’s words and the turkey slaughter became a way to make fun of Palin’s sincerity and naiveté.

 

However, this is not journalism. These reports offer us what new insight? What valuable information emerges when the video is run on television time after time with quaint chuckles and patronizing groans? Nothing. This is the same American press which lost its balls to perform its duty when President George W. Bush declared war on the wrong country and justified it with baseless information. Where were the knights of commentary then? I would hate to think men and women of my profession would rather pick on someone less compelling than report on an Administration that falsely sent Americans into harm’s way.

 

No, I do not write this in support of Sarah Palin. She stands nowhere near my political point of view. But American journalism in general and cable television, in particular, is showing its tendency to pile on when it should be double-checking the obvious and initiating changes of substance in its own backyard.

In a crisis, you need advice from genius

 Occasionally – before the foreseeable catastrophe or more likely during the melee itself – we seek good advice, the reliable wisdom that might help us navigate through the impending nightmare. I’ve been in that spot a ridiculous number of times. Why? At my age, for instance, I’ve survived lots of ugly moments, sometimes because I jump into more “situations” than I jump away from, and occasionally because I’m the sort of man who wants to be able to connect the dots before all the dots appear.

 

In such situations, I frequently have turned to the wisdom of Bugs Bunny. He’s been around a long time, and he’s found himself in difficult spots – up against an inner city mob, on the moon with no apparent help, a constant target of that pesky short guy with the blunderbuss, and others too absurd to believe. So, it should be obvious Bugs is some kind of counselor god.

 

Just through a surface examination, we can assume Bugs has some interesting approaches to life. He goes where he wants to go. He goes where he’s often not welcome to go. Bugs Bunny is autonomous, self-directed. He asks advice of no one we can detect on how to run his life. He operates alone. He’s seldom seen in a situation where he must protect himself and also commit time and resources to watch over slackers as well.

 

He knows the limits of his own resources and takes measures not to step outside of those margins.

 

Bugs Bunny speaks clearly and abruptly. “Ahaaaa, what’s up, Doc?” How clever this simple line can be. He uses it in various situations, but usually when he shows up unexpectedly – having survived a terrible incident – in an incongruous pose. Bugs’ line immediately pushes the encounter into his opponent’s lap by asking a question to which there is no logical answer. “What’s up, Doc?” is genius.

 

How can anyone forget Bug’s archetypal comeback when confronted by a pompous challenger. He shifts the criticism to the other by offering a seemingly uncultured if not also innocent wisecrack: “What a maroon!”

 

 

What he tells you about his own action philosophy offers no insight into his mysterious ways. It is a straight forward analysis of his own abilities and how his adversaries acquire only a shallow appreciation of those abilities. Following a typical encounter with his antagonist, he’ll turn to the audience and say, “He don’t know me too good, do he?” And then, as we cartoon fans know, he acts on that disconnect. The lesson for all of us might be to permit or encourage others to underestimate us in a shallow manner, and then strike when our enemies are blissfully ignorant of what’s heading their way.

 

Brilliance.

 

Yes, I have been a student of Bugs Bunny for as long as I can remember. When I need timely and simple advice, I know where to find it. I’ve moved all my self-help books into a box in the garage. Martin Heidegger? Why are his books there? Also gone are Descartes, Buddha, Marcus Aurelius, and Oprah.

 

Now you know who to consult in times of trouble. Bugs Bunny.

Like many, I want our country’s honor back

My students and friends can tell you I’m a sappy patriot. Whenever I discuss the Constitution or the uncanny wisdom of our founders, I get a little choked up sometimes. I feel so small and overwhelmed and very, very lucky to be able to call this country my home. I did not get shot at during the Revolutionary War. I’ve given no blood for this country’s continuing survival. But I have not failed to appreciate the genius in the Constitution.

 

That’s why I am outraged over the chief issues involving the Bush Administration I am afraid will be swept under the rug or quietly forgotten. The Bush Administration created a backdrop of fear. Every American citizen was to look into every other person’s activities. We were told to look for terrorists among our friends and neighbors. Under the direction of this administration, thousands if not millions of American citizens’ phone calls were tapped. Our troops tortured captives, sometimes to the point of death.

 

We have imprisoned, not detained, a couple thousand men we believe are our enemies. For much longer than necessary, we declined to give them much of the due process of law that the United States nearly regards as sacred. We denied them our Constitutional right to confront their accusers or the evidence against them, which authorities often said was secret. For months they could not retain lawyers. In time, though, even military lawyers defended them and openly protested their clients’ imprisonment. Those lawyers have my respect. When they held up their hand to take the oath, they meant it.

 

The issue? The unrestrained violation of our own integrity, our honor, our sense of decency, though it sounds sappy writing it down. We should never have to write them down. Our founders created a nation which reinforced freedoms from the very start, a nation that would say liberty with every step, a nation that would become the world’s democratic champion, a beacon for every person or country wanting to live under the rule of law, not men. People would not have to wonder if it was possible. It was here.

 

Then the Bush Administration and like-minded disciples trashed much of that hope and darkened the light. That’s the real sin, though there’s no law against squandering your virtue. But to detect terrorists, we showed the world we are not the guardian of goodness. We guard it only when it serves us. Do you have any notion how long it will take us to recover that respect?

 

We know what we did and why we did it, but that does not get us off the hook. The country was outraged, shocked, and scared, and we leaned in a direction very much not like us. Still, we should have given more thought to what we stand for. I have a ridiculous amount of faith in our justice system, perhaps enough faith to make me suspect we could hunt down the bad guys and bring them to justice in our own courts. I don’t know how you feel, but I would not want the FBI after me. I am sure they could find me without tapping phones, interrogating people, or torturing anyone. And as a reporter I’ve watched U.S. District Court judges do their work, fully cognizant of federal protections, of nailing criminals to the wall.

 

I want that faith back. I do not want our sins forgotten – forgiven, perhaps, but never forgotten – until we’ve come to understand that we can use the rule of law, freedom, and the might of our military to do what’s right, not bully others. I want my country’s honor back.

This is a column, not a ‘freakin’ blog

 I got clobbered during the weekend. She said she distinctly remembered in class I ranted over this new “blog” business and said I would never write a blog. I’m a columnist, I allegedly told the students. I write columns, not blogs.

 

She said I write the blog just like I would write a column, but now I call them blogs, not columns. She made it sound like I’ve sold out. She laughed and gave me a mischievous, clever look. It’s just so much fun beating up your former professor (though she never hesitated to do it in class, either).

 

Julia was not out to hurt me, but she was trying to knock her professor and advisor back on his original course. Many, including Julia, have told me I have softened some, and I lost sarcasm and some sense of humor. I just don’t seem to be the irreverent, insightful bastard many former students remember fondly. Considering this “blog” business, they suggest I need some reprogramming.

 

They are right. As of today, I’m renaming my files “column,” such as column13 for this one. That’s just a first step. I’ll try to think in terms of columns, not blogs. Thinking “column” instead of “blog” helps direct what’s left of my brain to delivering observations and information, not silly, badly written drivel we so often find in the unedited, almost adolescent blogs.

 

A “column” has a history. Early newspapers had eight to 15 “columns” of type, and printers often printed newspapers in small type. Their papers were massive, sometimes five feet wide. Eventually papers settled to eight or 10 columns, and then in 1984 the newspaper industry settled on a standard paper size and standard width columns. Most newspapers today still abide by the 1984 SAU (Standard Ad Unit) size with six columns, but papers might alter the width of columns in certain pages or sections.

 

The length of a “column,” including the space necessary to write a headline, is about 425 words. That’s your standard length today of a newspaper “column.”

 

A column traditionally appears on the editorial, or opinion page. We expect columns to contain the writer’s point of view while he or she analyzes an event or policy. We read them because we believe certain columnists offer solid insights. Truly good columnists earn a living offering these observations. Paul Krugman and Thomas L. Friedman, for example, also write savvy books. Both are New York Times columnists.

 

A blog, or “web-log,” presents the writer’s ideas more casually, and the blogger can do so in bursts or in a long analysis, depending on the issue and the audience. And the real advantage is that you can write it right now from anywhere in the world. I’m sitting at home, for example, looking out at the expected eight inches of snow falling atop an already documented 23 inches. I have my own fresh coffee, a small notebook, and dry feet. I know my column will be “posted” very shortly, as soon as I stop blathering on and on and give it one last examination.

 

But as of now, this is a column, and my expectations are higher. I need an editor to cut it. It is about 540 words long.

‘Trickle up’ economics works faster, better

 

There is nothing like an economic pre-collapse bailout program to help us find some clarity elsewhere in the economy. Sometimes – such as today – when the country gives billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to bungling, slick, filthy-rich global bankers and insurers, we might begin to wonder why we ignored small but consequential businesses. After all, the bankers admitted screwing up (actually, they said it passively, Mistakes were made). Meanwhile, small American businesses provided health care, a 40-hour week income, and honest products.

 

These large bailouts are consistent with “trickle down” economics, the favorite tool of free-market partisans and Republicans. This requires money be given to those on top. They put our money where they lost everybody’s money, and eventually the money trickles down to the rest of us. In other words, if you give the rich untroubled global bankers $700 billion of our money, some of us might see a dime or two a couple of years later.

 

I’m surprised so many Democrats were enthusiastic about that. Perhaps they got caught up in the excitement.

 

A fairer, perhaps more effective method to help the economy might be that suggested by Frank Nicastro, a Connecticut state representative. He wants the state to help some small newspapers because they’ll soon die, according to Reuters. The idea is that the press, especially small newspapers, are important to this culture and its democracy. They cover everything large newspapers and television stations ignore, which is considerable.

 

I like this idea. I’m a veteran newspaperman. For instance, I have always been peeved at people who want to “save” the family farm, whatever that is, at the expense of everyone else. It saves classic America, they say. Why did these people not include mom and pop grocery stores? How about small, adept car repair shops? Small town and country newspapers?

 

Nicastro does not want to lose the state’s small newspapers, especially those in his district. It’s hard to tell if he has some personal agenda in this, but he seems sincere. He seems to know that healthy newspapers are good for the democracy. He might be the last non-newspaper person to believe that. Nicastro might have recalled where people went for months to get news in depth following 9-11.

 

The main point here is that so far our government leadership has ignored small businesses, where we generate 90 percent of our jobs, in favor of saving global banks and automakers. I like the newspaper bailout loan idea, even though it generates plenty of ethical questions. How can you objectively cover government if government, in its wisdom, saves you financially? But there are thousands of small businesses which generate no ethical questions.

 

Still, the most sensible solution should be obvious. Want to kick-start our economy? Divide $700 billion by the country’s population, roughly 300 million. Give us the money. I guarantee you that 90 percent of it will be spent within a month at local banks, pizza shops, grocery stores, pharmacies, barber shops, car dealers, Internet marketers, and so on.

 

Now that’s trickle up economics. It trickles much, much faster and stimulates everyone.

 

 

Take heart, our ‘president for the world’

Often you get a more accurate sense of history in your own country when you see how citizens and leaders in other countries see that history.

 

I speak here, obviously, of the inauguration of Barrack Obama. This country has pretty much adopted Barrack Obama, his family, his hope, and his charm. Every day since Obama’s election, his approval numbers have risen, particularly among those who voted against him, and he is not yet president. Our support and faith in a new leader has led to a solidarity that is global.

 

BBC, the powerful, government supported radio and television network in England, decided only recently to give the incoming American president five straight hours of uninterrupted coverage in England. I hope I do not sound like I’m indulging history here, but England devotes a bit less time, I’m told, to critical activities of the crown. That’s interesting given that mother-child relationship we share with England.

 

A BBC reporter on BBC satellite yesterday described Washington as it welcomed thousands of visitors for today’s event. The reporter’s excitement expanded as he talked about the Washington Monument “rising high into the sky,” he said in a slightly shaky voice, to the Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson Memorial and the capitol building. He had to cease talking for almost a minute. I shared his pride as it reminded me of when I taught there five years ago. They seldom admit it, but they adore this country. When they speak of our first president, it is “General Washington,” much as they say “President Jefferson” or “Mister Madison.”

 

Two travelers visiting the inaugural this morning are citizens of the Bahamas, and they spoke through a delightful accent as citizens of the Western Hemisphere when one said they traveled to Washington to witness the inauguration of “our president.”

 

But what got me was a brief phrase in an Australian newspaper this morning about why it seems the whole world is watching our president. The newspaper said Obama is the “president for the world.”

 

 

 

How to lose elections? Well, let’s see

 

We have been through one hell of a presidential election process – primaries, conventions, advertising campaigns, speeches – so before we forget that series of events , we must glean lessons from it. What can political spin doctors learn to avoid next time? Or, to put that differently, What can a presidential campaign do to assure his or her own defeat?

 

 

Working from the second version of that question, let’s start with major decisions that foil campaigns. You want a candidate that enhances your campaign, creates lots of good buzz. So, instead, select a vice presidential candidate who, on the one hand, makes your candidate look dull, moth-worn, and desperate, and on the other hand your VP makes your average gas station money-changer sound like a genius. The VP candidate should appear confused, just like the presidential candidate, about the party’s goals and where countries are located. It would be a nice touch if the VP candidate eventually becomes news on irrelevant topics so your candidate’s political overtures are dumped to the hemorrhoid ad page or to last five minutes of national news.

 

 

Then there’s public speaking. The public expects presidential candidates and their side kicks to be able to speak to large crowds, inspire the uninspired, be clever, sound energetic, stand poised, and raise intelligent points. So, if you want to handicap your duo, nominate people who cannot find new ways to say the same thing and sound worn out when they fail. A constant cough or hack would be a nice add.

 

 

Advertise irrelevant and often erroneous points. Have old people standing in corn fields talk about courage and love of country. Squander your advertising dollar. It would be inappropriate in modern times to accuse your opponent of having sex with goats, but you can accuse him of having friends with strange ideas. Your opponent might be godless! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Hell, most politicians pretend to be so religious that god might be taking notes. So in the case of your opponent, make the “godless” thing stick. Toss in the word “heathen” occasionally. Christians are standoffish with heathen people. Besides, voters usually aren’t smart enough to know the difference.

 

 

Steal your opponent’s slogan. Bewilder voters. Try to make it work for your team. It won’t work for you, of course, but it will make your man to look foolhardy and, if you’re lucky, a bit dangerous. It will leave everyone wondering. Mystery is a plus. Make sure anything the candidate does stand for is hard to nail down and perhaps a conservative cliché.

 

Debates offer fantastic opportunities to lose an election. First, argue over what a debate is and isn’t, then agree to debate forums which make your guy look clumsy. Here’s a good example: If your candidate cannot answer questions, walk among the audience members, know camera locations and where he is – all at the same time – then beg for those encounters. Make the other candidate appear the wise adult.

 

The idea in an American election is to surround your candidate with American flags, right? Make sure flags adorn the airplane, the podium, office doors, advertisements, and so on. At some point, the number of flags works against you. Find that point and exceed it, but issue plenty of American flag pins. People love that.

 

Deny your link to your own party and the previous candidate of your own party. Postpone engagements. Look frantic when unsuspecting cameras appear. Frantic is better than organized and calm. Frantic says you’re working out a problem, such as, “What is the Internet?” or why your staff scheduled the big turning point speech in a town owned by the other political party.

 

Republicans become the ‘no way’ party

 

 

Not one Republican voted to support the Economic Stimulus bill. Not one. All that GOP whining about not being appreciated got President Obama to remove billions of dollars of stimulus expenditures, including upgrading and seeding the Washington mall, and replace them with tax cuts so Republicans could feel warm and cuddly.

 

Somehow, this does not surprise me. Despite all the requests Republicans made for participation, they decided instead that any stimulus bill would fail – or at least appear to fail – so they can claim later that it was all a mess and they valiantly avoided it.

 

These politicos are so, so brave.

 

Let’s look at this from a better angle. It was the Republican mantra – the uncontrolled, unregulated, never challenged, free market economics – that made the economy violently implode. And those fearless Republicans, who freely criticized the market just before the election, who now stand shoulder to shoulder in opposition to the facts. Instead of participating in fixing the situation for the future and taxpayers, the Republicans step back in unison and wrap themselves in their almost bankrupt ideology.

 

Adam Smith would not allow us to deviate.

 

The problem is, to get more focused, the Republicans do not get it. They simply have no gut sense of the immensity of the situation. They believe that if we cut some taxes here and there, all that “extra” moola will jump-start the economy and move all of us back to “spendability.” They deny their own government research shows tax cut money produces only its own weight in spending while stimulus spending gains 35 to 50 cents more than one dollar.

 

But all that is unimportant to the GOP. That political party lives in its own world where Leave it to Beaver was nearly a religious show.

 

OK, Republicans, it is a good thing I do not have any say in this. It is good that President Obama is a patient man. What I would do is never invite House Republicans to help me construct an important bill. I would remove all the stuff from the bill you wanted, and I would put back the good things I removed. Next time I had to write a powerful bill, I would tell the country precisely why. If we stop wasting time with the dishonorable opposition, we can get these economic stimulus packages finished more quickly.

 

Good idea, but we’re all thankful Roat is not president.

Culture conflict: Today’s D.C. politics

 

We sit back these days and angrily watch Washington’s swirling mess, becoming impatient and defeated. Just when things looked better, the snarling hostility spewing from our nation’s capital emerged right on time. Democrats push for change and the Republicans resist anything like it. If we can set aside the day-to-day hostility and take the longer view, we detect a struggle far more enduring than mere political merrymaking. What we see in Washington is a collision of cultures, one fiercely emerging and the other battling against its own obsolescence.

 

 

The nature of the second culture, the one that has dominated for a long time, materialized over the centuries to fill our growing need for strength and power. These people built and operated our banks, our military, our finance system, and fill many lesser managerial tasks. Eventually they managed nearly everything and assumed they should dominate the culture. For a long time, they were the chosen. They polished their presentations to the world, subtly softened their image, redefined the concept of greed, and assumed dominating roles in politics.

 

 

These are the people who moved to the suburbs and built starter-castles which include a lawn crew and a pool maintenance man. Most drive at least one European car. They speak of their “cottage” on the lake, their power boat, stock profile, and their children’s opportunities at trendy colleges. They politely discuss the need for diversity. They visibly volunteer to help the less advantaged at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They practice civility, consideration, and politeness. They distrust new ideas but adore “newish” clothing and adornments. Accordingly, they like coal-fired, reliable, traditional power plants.

 

 

Oddly, they assume kinship with very old, conservative religions and new evangelical sects, religions which firmly define power and obedience. Though they do not discuss it this way, they adhere to religions that divide and control. Members dress well. This group, the Wing Tips, is composed of people whose power, which is considerable, comes from identifiable links to shaping, manipulating, and delivering money. They believe themselves, their friends, and their families to be entitled. This is an important word here, and more on it later.

 

 

Before I get to the newer, emerging group, I want to help find the Wing Tips in the news. These people run our largest finance institutions. They compose the larger portion of the Republican Party. They dominate country clubs, high-end restaurants, and first class airline seats. They know people who can get good tickets to tomorrow’s game. Overall, they are older than any other identifiable group. The true power brokers are at least 60.

 

 

The emerging group is obviously different, and it tends to include people of all ages. It has an overwhelming patronage among baby boomers and echo boomers. While they often speak of the 1950s as dull, the 1950s were the years when Americans were more equal than ever before or since. Social Security helped the old, and a heavily graduated income tax created immense opportunities. It was the beginning of the modern middle class. There existed a sense of fairness and genuine care for one another, which they dragged into the 1960s and 1970s. They believed in community. Consumer protection surfaced, giving the seller more responsibilities and worries. They believed in working together to shoulder society’s duties. They called those who protected the established order “The Man.” Many despised religion, seeing it as a divider and likely false, but they remain interested. They often stepped out of line. The Delinquents are uniters. They are “tree-huggers” and hope to reduce global warming. They share, want to solve disputes, and see connections among all countries. They like power-generating windmills.

 

 

The conflict between the Wing Tips and the Delinquents began in the 1960s and continues, not in the streets, but in the House and Senate for control of our nation and its future. Baby boomers have grown up and become very pushy.

 

 

Look at the current disputes. Why did Congress fail to put requirements in the first bailout bill to permit citizens to trace where the money went? Wing Tips trust one another. They are among the select, the entitled. They are brothers. So the treasury secretary, for example, did not even think of that. How can anyone, such as the Delinquents, question that relationship? After all, Wing Tips know they are Master Managers of All Things Economic. And what about those bankers who take billions of taxpayer dollars then schedule big, expensive parties to celebrate their incompetence, astronomical bonuses to reward their mistakes, and brand new business jets to fly comfortably? Well, again, these managers are entitled to these rewards. They are the Wing Tips. They have rewarded themselves for decades. It is a given, a default cost of doing business. Right?

 

 

How could anyone misunderstand the relationship between the rulers and the rest of us? The point here isn’t that these bankers and finance officials treat others like ants. The point is they are the masters. They never, ever thought about how others view their activities because those interpretations, including this one, are irrelevant.

 

 

The Delinquents no longer wait for the day they will be permitted to make the big decisions and set a course for the sort of world they envision. They’re going after it, pursuing it, narrowing the Wing Tips’ options, and gathering numbers and strength from our diverse culture and the flourishing college audience. Interestingly, the Delinquents, who are a very compassionate, warmhearted group, have risen to the current level because it has learned aggressiveness and power brokerage from Wing Tips.

 

 

Each group is angry, not understanding how anyone could believe the other group. Each warns the populace that if the other group wins, the country and perhaps the world will collapse into vulnerable irrelevance. Wing Tips say Delinquents will simply build a larger government, ignoring their own existing monolith, and that is supposed to be bad. Ironically, the only two presidents that reduced the size of federal government are Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and neither said he would. Maybe that’s how it works.

Let’s create right to confidentiality

We should consider creating a new right in the United States by combining an existing Constitutional right with another right honed within 220 years of court decisions.

Please consider. Each of us has the First Amendment right to speak freely in this country. Though we often debate the limits of this right, it remains fairly secure. Even better, the millions of Americans believe in it, honor it, and find themselves rather comfortable with its benefits. We also have the idea of privacy, and that you have a right to your privacy, though it is not specifically set into the Constitution. Years of court decisions, however, have built a presumed right of privacy based on, among other items, your right not to have troops take over your home without permission, a government search warrant is necessary to search your home or car, and your right to silence in court where the state must prove you guilty without your help.

 Meanwhile, you can talk with a lawyer, doctor, psychologist, or preacher with the presumption of confidentiality. A doctor, for example, could tell others what you told the doctor in the medical center, but doing so would be a serious violation of medical ethics. A doctor would rather face the wrath of the court than the rage of the medical profession. Obviously, to provide the best medical treatment, a doctor needs to know the truth and know it immediately.

Journalists have been trying for decades to establish a right to confidentiality for whomever they interview, and in states with strong “shield” laws, they have more or less succeeded. But all shield laws have limitations.

We have firmly established your right to privacy when you speak to a host of people, in fact, but there is no general presumption to privacy anywhere. If two people share a secret involving one or both of them, they share confidentiality until a prosecutor thinks investigators need that information. Your lonely battle against the prosecutor will become a public shame to many. Misinformed (and perhaps dim-witted) bloggers will rake you over. And a whispering campaign will destroy your reputation. You MUST be hiding something. Unless you are willing to be locked up for “contempt of court” or fined for the betterment of mankind, then you’ll provide the information and make prosecutors blissfully happy.

 That’s wrong. If two people share a secret, they should be allowed to maintain that confidentiality. It’s up to them to decide. Sure, investigators might need it and try to get it, but in the end you must be able to maintain the honor and integrity you established with the other. You should not be bullied through force and legal threats. An American citizen should be able to bare his soul, so to speak, to someone with integrity and not fear legal punishment. We all recognize such conversations as the beginning of healing.

I do not expect legal scholars to dash to their law libraries and craft a law on this subject. Lawyers seem to be too busy suing people to consider this. But you and I should start thinking about it, and soon.

California needs water and a reality check

 I just returned from a three-week visit to California.

 

Here are the benefits I see of living in California: Lots and lots of sunlight, dry air, the Pacific Ocean, orange trees, regal mountains, fascinating Mexican-American grocery stores, and the fact that cars from the 1950s retain their beauty if you do not soak them in salt. The smaller, fashionable cities along the shore, such as Malibu, are very nice but only five miles long and about 500 feet wide. These towns must be full of very important people. Overall, everyone appears to be on good behavior. Not once did I feel anxious about my surroundings or the people in it. I hope I mentioned the sunshine, or this list would be shorter.

 

Though lots and lots of sunlight remains a positive reason to live in California, let me first enlighten you about other observations. All the major highways, especially the four-lane variety, become parking lots at daybreak and stay that way past sunset. It is insane to outsiders, but Californians seem to like it that way. I doubt they know anything else. Thousands of cars and trucks clutter most other streets. Every Californian has a car. You are nothing without a car in California. If there were ever a state needing a high-speed mass transit system, it is California. But where would they build it? All usable space has disappeared. That’s why many of the well-heeled live on hillsides and hope for drought.

 

The state sales tax is 10 percent. Just imagine that for a moment because, based on how rapidly states are going broke, your state might need to impose the same tax soon. Everything you buy in California could be had for 25 percent less in the Midwest. Gasoline is consistently 30-40 cents higher than at Midwest stations.

 

A very elderly man of Chinese dissent told me he must complete some family business in Europe, but he hesitates to fly to Europe because he might get caught in a Midwest winter storm. Yeah, that’s what he said, and he meant it. He has lived most of his life in paradise. No winter storms. Stable temperatures. He lives in a desert that Mother Nature will return to a desert if Californians do not find more water. His concept of the Midwest involves fear and wariness.

 

Water has been California’s problem for decades. Remember Chinatown? Not only was it a good depiction of the water shortage, it portrayed miles of orange groves in the valley. Those groves are largely gone now replaced by miles of 40-year-old homes on Lilliputian lots. Californians believe those homes are worth $350,000, but you can buy the same house with more property, better insulation and real furnaces in the Midwest for $150,000 or less, very scary winter storms included. Midwest folks do not fear their neighbors, but Californians know if they water their lawns, someone will call the authorities. Until more water magically appears, lawns might dry up.

 

Twenty-eight years ago I rode my motorcycle through central and northern California, but I didn’t stay long. I was on my way to Oregon State University to be a scholar. I enjoyed a one-week visit 20 years before that to watch a Rose Bowl game. We were undefeated, but lost by two points to the same team we beat in the first game. Yes, I’m old but still a football fan.

 

Maybe I’ll visit Oregon soon. Oregonians are not as full of themselves and have no shortage of water.

Destroy education’s bitter subtext: Passivity

 

The problematic health of America’s education system sits high on President Barack Obama’s fix-it list. The president should be worried. Far too many American schools are a mess – underpaid and/or under performing teachers, confused administrators, buildings in poor condition, rising drop-out rates, and students unable to pass simple but comprehensive reading, writing, and math tests.

 

Over the past two or three decades, this concern has prompted a lot of activity, most of it well intentioned but poorly aimed. The federal government’s “no child left behind” law set higher test standards but, as usual, offered no money to help. States, meanwhile, tweaked their own standard curricula (they’re on the Web, if you want to look). States fear curricula has fallen behind cultural needs. It has fallen behind, but that is only part of the problem. However, state education departments do know how to demand reports and point fingers. School boards seem focused on new roofs, AC systems, janitorial contracts, sports programs, elimination of arts programs, and avoiding clashes with state guidelines.

 

Real improvement remains off the table.

 

Most critics of modern American education take the school curriculum – what schools teach and how they teach it – for granted. Critics do not challenge it for reasons unknown to many of us, but it is likely we all have nurtured some kind of awe or respect for those who make those decisions. We just bitch about the result.

 

But let me point to a rather complex array of educational goals we must reexamine. They evolved from a set of social engineering “improvements” someone had embraced and then steadily applied them to everyone, particularly defenseless school children. These improvements were well intentioned, but that is part of the problem. Intentions have nothing to do with it.

 

• First, there’s this political correctness philosophy. Most of us agree we need to discourage the use of many very damaging words, particularly those insulting gender or race. But political correctness has become part of a school’s curriculum equipped with punishments and an expanded list of “bad” words and phrases. Not only does this appear a bit outside education’s boundaries, it is an obvious discouragement to free speech. No longer are we encouraged to debate if we can control behavior by limiting words. Some obscure group made that decision for us.

• Second, today’s educators are afraid someone will be uncomfortable. If red marks on a paper makes a student feel uncomfortable, school boards ban red pens. We cannot permit a student to confront his or her failings, of course. We become uncomfortable at such thoughts. No, we make red a “bad” thing. This lack of comfort can get even further out of control if “comfort” authorities do not act quickly. Students used to be uncomfortable by design. Not today. We encourage students to be weenies and believe discomfort with the world is not their burden but someone else’s problem.

• Which brings me to the next educational misstep. Have you noticed the change in words educationists use to describe objects and people? A student is not a student, he is a “learner.” She goes to a “learning center” (a “school,” you slow learners) in a carefully designed “learning environment” (classroom) free of bad words and discomforts and where a “learning facilitator” (teachers are no longer wanted) creates an opportunity for whoever sits in the chairs to be learners. It gets confusing, but imagine how the learners feel. This new learner vocabulary has not caught on thoroughly yet, but it’s just around the corner. It is already in state guidelines.

• Students – or learners – are not encouraged to use their brains, good sense, and dedication to answer questions, turn in great papers, or be the first to talk in class, either. No, they have learned that everyone in the “learning environment” should be permitted to answer questions before bright students can offer their thoughts. This encourages “sharing.” Today we do not seek clarity, intelligence, or insight.

• The last item – I could go on – is what students write about in today’s learning centers. In the past we had to “react” to what we read by assembling ideas, quotes, insights, and our own experience and write something that challenges, supports, or explains an idea. Apparently that was way too much work. People must have become uncomfortable. Educators simplified that old baloney and encouraged students to write about their feelings. How to you feel about Shakespeare’s play? That keeps everything effortless and basic. When these kids go to college, of course, many professors will require a response more relevant, but many college professors are falling into the “feeling” trap, too. That’s a whole column for later.

 

 

Education has become a program without an educational theme. Fixing the roof, tweaking the “no child left behind” tests, and rewarding teachers whose “learners” do well on tests may keep us all busy over the next several years, but it won’t advance education or prune away these bad ideas. This absurdity has become the subtext to today’s education: Reward mediocrity, focus on a person’s feelings, elevate sharing above making clear decisions, instill the notion that you have a right never to feel discomfort, and turn learners into passive “units” rather than encourage the students’ creativity, insight, or diligence.

 

New ships could offer world more Hope

 

Dear Mr. President,

When I was a teenager, which was some time ago, the United States had a special ship that acquired the imagination and respect of the American people. No, it was not a U.S. Navy ship, though it was originally designed for the Maritime Commission. The U.S.S. Consolation, launched in 1944, was a hospital ship, and it served very actively until 1955 when it was decommissioned and held in reserve. It floated there five years when it was renamed S.S Hope and outfitted with a full cadre of civilian doctors and modern medical equipment, and it served in that capacity for 14 years.

“The good ship Hope,” as she was identified during those final years of service, traveled the globe on 11 voyages where people needed a hospital ship. It was one of the finest ideas someone in this country ever envisioned, and I can only guess what that ship did for this country’s image during those years. Superior medical care is one of the services this country can offer others.

I would love to see this country do this again and this time with perhaps two hospital ships. Surely we have other ships in reserve which can be overhauled and refitted for the duty of offering superior medical care to the poor, the diseased, the disabled, and those suffering from poor sight, broken bones, shock, and a myriad of unanticipated ailments. Just picture a glorious white ship with immense red crosses fore and aft and bristling with scalpels, operating rooms, and hospital beds. This time I suggest these ships be owned and operated by the U.S. Navy, not leased to civilians, and occasionally be escorted by swift warships able to deal with today’s scattered but global evils.

 I would hope that one or two medical schools would supply training and oversight and work these activities into the schools’ curriculum. Two years later another set of universities will pick up those duties, providing their graduates with some of the best on-site experience they could ever find. Some older civilian medical personnel might decide that a one-year “vacation” on these hospital ships may revive their spirits and desire.

Think of it as a new Peace Corps able to do what others cannot offer. Think of it as new foreign aid. Think of it as the right thing to do for both the Third World and the United States. Think of it as more audacity of hope.

Watch for worn phrases, abused words

In the beginning of the United States space program, we sent a high-speed object to the moon. It had no purpose other than getting there to prove that using our technology we could send something to the moon. Every 10 or 15 seconds it would send us a picture as the object closed the distance. Millions of Americans perched in front of TVs so they could watch America’s first “visitation” to the moon.

 

Then the narrator – odd we must narrate virtually everything on TV – said, as the screen went black (the big moment), “We impacted it.”

 

I knew from that day on the narrator had invented a new word, a word I would never like. It continues to annoy me. The narrator had turned a wonderful noun, impact, into an ugly verb. Because this was NASA, which also gave us “A-OK” and a few other more techno-space contributions, people with limited vocabularies decided to verbalize “impact.” They needed to fit in. After all, NASA used it.

 

That was more than 40 years ago, when “impact” had a rugged, no-nonsense sound to it. Today is sounds gentle and smooth. We lost an impressive word. What sounds more serious than impact? Impact is a good word for a bullet hitting its target.

 

We have a lot of word melting going on today, too. It’s not television’s fault, but you tend to hear it a lot while watching. Here are a few words and phrases that once had a nice sound to them but now sound like punctuation:

• How many times do you hear something like this? “We’ll now have more troops on the ground in Afghanistan where they are dreadfully needed.” Where else would they be? Floating around in dirigibles? We could eliminate the phrase altogether without changing the meaning. But, no, we’ll hear this probably for years to come. If you or I used this stupid phrase at the grocery store, people would take notes and start to avoid us. The smart ones would laugh at us. Toss that phrase into the box labeled, Think outside the box.

• Two politicos disagree on some point when one, with a tone meaning the chat needs to end soon, says, “Well, at the end of the day, the legislature still needs to leave that alone until it gets more information.” Essentially it means “at the end of the process,” whatever the process is. But you can barely make a potty trip without missing yet another mention of “at the end of the day.” Most of us can’t wait that long.

• Recently I began to hear “segway,” as in, “Let me help you with a segway.” The speaker meant he would help the other to transition from one subject to another. This was on MSNBC, my favorite political news site. The announcers (they would prefer “journalistic air personalities”) worked all day at offering segway to one another. But I have heard others using that term, as if the rest of us know what it is. I found one or two references to it on the Web, but I’ll leave that one to you.

 

I really like our president, and so do the American people. Because he is so popular, President Obama can manipulate the language and we’ll adopt it instantly. Until now he’s tried to wear out moving forward, a popular political metaphor. Only Republicans want to move backward, and they call it “returning to core values.” Today, in his announcement about Chrysler’s next move, Obama said, “I don’t stand with that.” Just watch that phrase start bouncing off walls everywhere.

 

While you’re at it, watch for “surgical bankruptcy,” too. What the hell is that?