Worrisome Trepidation:
Maybe I spend too much time, of late, mulling over ethical behavior and ethical politics. It would have been better had I spent this much time mulling away at an earlier age. Maybe I kind of always have, but it takes time for me to process input and reach conclusions. Plus, youth is characterized too often by personal progress and blind patriotism. Americans were always the good guys and our leaders always morally above reproach. If our government said we had to invade Vietnam to save freedom for the world and protect America from harm, it was good enough for me (but not good enough for me not to seek a deferment from the draft). I and Barry Goldwater thought more bombing was the answer, more will power to stay the course, etc.
Now that I am older and useless in terms of being part of any solution, I realize how relative all this bullshit is. And finally I can do the math. If killing 2000 Americans in the World Trade Center bombings (what Al Queda would call an act of war) is a tragedy, then jailing for more than a decade 450,000 young poor people for selling us our recreational drugs is, if I can do the math, a tragedy 225 times as great. If Hussein killing up to 20,000 of his own people over a ten year period is an unacceptable atrocity, then a Sudanese government which is about to genocidally kill 1.5 million in the next three months, is an atrocity 8 times as great.
For the richest country on the earth to have 39.9 million people in poverty---a population greater than that of this country just 150 years ago, then to me this is a stunning indictment of our priorities and values.
And I am finally tired of this insidious campaign to always paint Americans as somehow the ethical superior of other groups, whether it be one class of people in htis country against another, or one religious group compared to another, or one nation against another. Bush always likes, as only Bush can do with such inane simplicity, to target an atrocity committed by others and boast, "This is not what America is about, we don't kill innocent people", etc. When the religious right sing a hymn they can feel their moral superiority raising their righteousness to new levels; no logical thought process is required or desired. I understand all this because I have been there, but we would be far better off to accept the premise that human nature is human nature, that the fight for justice must take precedence over selfish individualistic or patriotic greed. It is not clear at all to me that the Al Queda bombing the 'world Trade Centers and killing innocents,in an attempt to get our military bases out of their countries, is much different than our wiping out entire Indian villages because we wanted their land, or wiping out entire Vietnam villages because we suspected they sympathized with our enemies, or creating urban ghettoes across our land in an attempt to save the rest of us from the personal responsibility to control our own use of drugs. It hardly takes a genius to understand why the rest of the world is increasingly and very rapidly viewing Americans as arrogant self serving intolerant terrorists in our own right, and in our own peculiar ways. The same pride Bush instills in his followers, not unlike the pride Hitler instilled in his followers, is frightening other nations across the globe. Where they ask, is the American they once knew?
The same crowd that goes apoplectic over abortion or allowing people to control their own dying process, or thinks putting to death a human 'vegetable' is murder, thinks little, if at all, about real live fully conscious PERSONS who will be genocidally killed by the millions, or live PERSONS by the millions in abject poverty not too far from their doorsteps, or real LIVE CONSCIOUS KIDS receiving but one third of tax monies for their education compared to the education of their own kids, or find no problem with their own kid getting a fine for using a drug while the kid who sold it to him, as the only means to put money in his pocket, goes to jail for more than a decade, or finds anything wrong with other kids or adults having no health insurance. When this crowd begins to worry about REAL PERSONS, not living cells with the potential to be a person, or living cells that will never again be a person, then maybe they can argue they have their priorities right. Then everybody's kid is precious, not just their own kids; when every couple in love are precious, not just their own choice of a lover; when the religious beliefs of all are protected, not their own religious beliefs made the law of the land; when this crowd expands their feelings of warmth and affection past their own family unit, then, and only then, does family values have a meaning inclusive of all humanity----all variants of family units---not just their own particular family unit. It puzzles me how some of the finest and best among us (in their own personal lives) can end up so oblivious to the richness of diversity and the pressing needs of others. I have news for them, I doubt God is blessing American right now. More likely HE/SHE is pissed off.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
DATED: 2004 Domestic Irremissibility--An oldie but goodie
OUR ULTRA NATIONAL DOMESTIC IRREMISSIBILITY
A May/June 2004 Musing
R. S. James
Because I expended a greater effort, including partial revisions, this musing got lengthy. In the effort to be concise, clear, and get to the hub of this matter I got frustrated by the limitations of the human mind. Unfettered thinking on moral principles invariably becomes an inextricable Gordian knot. If we think enough, if we live long enough, maybe we end up clueless, the certainty of youth evaporated. Logical panoramic thought is laborious. It is easier to turn on something electronic and be amused. Truth, it is said, will set you free. But before it does it will make you angry. In the end “the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple”(Oscar Wilde). If I tend to harp on the selected topic for this musing it is a reflection of just how outrageous and cruel this business is of destroying lives of the young before they ever really have a chance to escape the fate imposed on them by others. And the others is us in a collective fashion. The 35,000 soldiers who died in Vietnam was a tragedie (Fr) and a disgrace that most Americans, including myself, were compliant participants. We believed our purpose was noble---to bring democracy to Vietnam and protect us and the world from a hostile communist threat to national and global security. It was all bullshit. Vietnam was a sovereign artificially divided country with the right and obligation to determine it’s own form of government and they posed no threat to anyone’s security. The 600 or so American soldiers who have died in Iraq already and who will die in what is clearly likely to be a long siege, is being considered by more and more a similar tragedy. Old people dying is not a cataclysmic tragadie, it is a part of life, it comes with the gift of life, it is unavoidable and a natural event. Young people whose lives are needlessly sacrificed---terminated early in their productive years---by deliberate actions of those who should be protecting them, these deaths are the disgraceful deaths, the preventable deaths. If you are going to die young, it ought be for a worthwhile cause, as a last resort, or it is tragic. Any parent who loses a son or daughter at a young age from a disease or condition knows the cruelty of losing a life before the person really had a chance to develop their potential and enjoy the many good things life has to offer.
But when it comes to the wanton destruction of young lives in this country nothing compares remotely to the 450,000 young people imprisoned long term for selling varied recreational drugs to those who have chosen to use them. For the most part, you may as well line these young people up and just slowly strangle the Promethean breath of life, the vitality of life, from them.. Their life is over: death by sesquipedalian terms of incarceration. Born into an environment they did not create, cornered into seemingly hopeless poverty, jailed for a decade or more with the worst of peers, they emerge from prison middle aged, emotionally and mentally damaged, no skills, no friends, and little or no prospect of gainful employment, social fulfillment, or good health. On a comparable basis, in many respects, those who died in Vietnam or Iraq at least mercifully died in a short period of time. These 450,000 young people, mostly from black urban or white rural ghettoes, die the slow cruel death of abandoned lonely ‘nothingburgers’. Let’s put this 450,000 ‘legal and religious coup de grace’ purge in proper perspective. It is almost 13 times the number of our soldiers killed in Vietnam. It is 3 times the number of soldiers currently in Iraq. It is almost as many who died in the Civil War. It is more than Hussein is purported to have killed over a 20 yr. period. It probably exceeds the number of pages of all my musings.
To me, the first and foremost obligation of any society is to protect and nurture the less fortunate. This trickle down bullshit is nothing more than a concocted excuse to further the financial status of the already affluent. If there were an ounce of truth to this cruel hoax, then the share of the financial pie for the non 5 and 10 percenters would be growing, not shrinking. As part of our communal obligation, the first and primary effort at rebuilding areas devastated by war should be our own war ravaged communities. The War on Drugs, like any other war, generates casualties, creates war zones, drives out businesses and all those who can afford to live elsewhere. Whatever the good intentions, after 40 years of failure, this war is a wicked iniquitous war. It has accomplished nothing, we hardly lead the world in having the least drug problems, recreational drug use is as rampant as ever, what is legal is not based on medical toxicity, but on majority rule. When the govt. tried to make illegal a drug used by the majority, namely alcohol, they abandoned such a war because of the crime such prohibition caused. We tolerate this current war for two reasons only---the drugs involved are not the recreational drugs used by the majority of us, and the devastation caused by this war is mostly limited to the ghettoes across the land. This indifference to the plight of these areas is a national disgrace.
I believe recreational drug use is best controlled by education and rehabilitation. That is the approach we take to alcohol and nicotine and that is the approach we should take with the others. If a small portion of the money being spent on this political and religious war on drugs were to be spent on education for all, and rehabilitation for those with recreational drug abuse problems, the gang and crime problem in the urban ghettoes would be drastically reduced. Almost all the gang stuff is over drug selling turf rights. In prohibition it was adult gangs, in this modern attempt at prohibition it is young gangs who control the turf. I know I may supererogate my attacks on organized religion, but the indifference of organized religion to the needs of the poor, minorities, and the different in our society has slowly over the years simply enraged me as no other issue has. I can’t count the number of times a young student sat in my office and poured out their frustrations on the varied stresses and burdens they faced from their environment. The problems were all over the place from family, from poverty, from gangs, from health matters, and it just goes on and on. I, of course, was just a physiologist, a Reaganistic Christian patriot with the requisite obliviousness to the needs of the least amongst us, and hardly trained to understand or solve their problems. These were the people Jesus and every other major prophet in every major religion spent their lives among. These are the people Jesus and every major prophet demanded their followers assist . I can tell you with all honesty I can’t recall a single case in which any of these students were assisted by organized religion. Early on I would often, seeking some way for them to receive assistance from some organization, suggest the student approach a church for help. Such a suggestion just generated a laugh or sigh, and in some form or fashion the student would tell me, “The churches in my neighborhood are as poor as me, just some old ladies in raggedy clothes yapping about God. The most they can do is give you a sandwich or some raggedy pants to wear. And they know nothing about the real world, just babble about being saved etc.”. Sadly, the churches in the better neighborhoods are totally wrapped up in rituals, choirs, luxurious temples, social events, meaningless sermons, ceremonies like marriages or funerals, stained glass windows, running educational schools, organizing social outings, building recreational centers, and God knows what else. Jesus spent most of his time directly dealing with those in need. Would anyone like to guess what percentage of time most ministers or priests ever spend directly with such people? Would anyone like to guess what percentage of the money contributed to an organized religion ever gets directly into the hands of those in need? And would anyone like to guess what percent of the time most affluent parishioners of organized religion ever spend in direct contact with those most in need? I ceased going to church when I realized it was a waste of my time and none of the robotic like ceremonies I participated in had anything to do with real religion. Name one prophet in any major religion, including Jesus himself, who ever suggested expensive cathedrals be built, that children be isolated from others and taught to read and write by church members, who ever organized complicated ceremonies or rituals to be practiced, or ever suggested their followers band together, isolate themselves from the poor, the different, minorities and any others most in need. Finally, what religious founder, Jesus or any of the others, ever suggested religious leaders need be college degreed and salaried?
I feel real uncomfortable about those 450,000 kids we slam in jail for selling recreational drugs. To remotely suggest this is what Jesus would do to them, or Buddha, or Confucius, etc. is absurd. These kids did not elect to be born with a single parent, or to live in a ghetto, or be born into a certain religion, or to be a certain race, or be sent to the poorest schools, or to have the poorest teachers (who often despise their asses like my teacher neighbor Sue) or to be exposed to the worst of peer pressures, or to live in a neighborhood where there are no jobs, or to have a parent so low on the totem poll as to be shoved around by everyone with whom their parent comes in contact. And no real Christian nation would ever let such kids be alone, to be left surrounded by that kind of environmental baggage, living in squalor with bars on the window while Numskull Rumsfeld pitter patters his way hither and thither among his 7 chateaus in New Mexico. To say that none of us has any responsibility for these kids--- no direct responsibility---is to declare ourselves non Christians. For any minister or priest not to demand his parishioners directly assist these kids, be there for them as extended family---is to make anything else they do as ‘disciples’ of God almost irrelevant.
If a government undercover agent sets up someone, to entice them to commit a criminal act, a Judge often throws out the arrest as being an illegal setup. I charge our society sets these kids up so that as teenagers, in the absence of any other job prospect, and desperate for material possessions like the affluent have coming out of their ears---that these kids do what we have set them up to do---sell drugs on the street corner so they too can have some sort of income. What other realistic alternative do these kids have---how many of us, in the same environment, would not run the risk and try to make a few bucks? Judges complain all the time about these mandatory drug sentencing laws, fostered by political pressures, especially from the religious right . Imagine having Judges and then having sleazy politicians, egged on by religious dogmaniacs, decide how to sentence defendants. God, how bad is that?
So, it can be asked, just what are we as a society supposed to do about it? I think it starts with priorities. If this environment we allow so many kids to grow up in really is a national disgrace, then we do something about it. We can go to the moon, we can spend most of our tax monies building and using weapons of mass destruction, we can provide more and more tax breaks to the wealthy, we can irresponsibly overpopulate the earth, we can exploit our God given environment, we can spend hundreds of millions occupying Iraq, we can grease the wheel for so few to take so much from so many for decades etc. “The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking” (Albert Einstein). Well I claim, if we want to, we can rebuild urban and rural ghettoes and meet the needs of all our kids. To imprison kids by the hundreds of thousands rather than deal with their needs is the ultimate censure of our so called Christian society. I have seen sufficient numbers of these ghetto mothers and sometimes fathers in my classes. They have lived all their life with their backs up against the wall, not by their actions, but by an environment that the rest of us are collectively responsible for creating. Some of these mothers, in an evening class, would have their teenage son pick them up after class to escort them safely back home. The scenario, for me, was always kind of chilling. Mom, wanting to show her kid that she was really somebody, and making something of herself, would find reasons to chat with me after class as her kid stood there waiting. The kid would invariably give me an icy hostile stare, and if spoken to would utter the briefest and least informative response. To the kid, his mother was once again forced to grovel in her life, this time for a grade, and the kid has long since learned to hate watching his mother grovel, whether it be with the landlord, a boss, a boyfriend, a relative, etc. Of course the mom is not groveling with me about a grade, but the son sees it differently. This kid is very angry, and he has long since learned the world is just one of domination or submission---take or be taken. He will be going to jail because he has decided to be one of the takers. Fuck it, for a while he is going to be in charge and have some money. There is only today, there may be no tomorrow, and if there is a tomorrow, he has seen all around him what tomorrow will be like for those of his fettle.
So, what then should be our obligation to these kids? It starts with education and making sure every kid has a quality extended family---every damn kid. In Illinois we spend in some areas (the ghettoes) $4000 per year per kid while in others we spend $17,000 per year per kid. We ought to put a stop to that. Hell we can go millions and millions of dollars into debt to finance a War against Iraq, but there is no money for our poorest of kids to be given a good education. I understand the reality that affluent parents want their kids to be in better schools and there is no practical way anyone is going to change that. They live where they live in large part so that the school their kids go to will be better than the ones poorer kids go to. If parents want anything, they want their kids to have advantages in life. So I grant one must pander to this fact of life. I suggest the state or federal govt. control the size of classrooms and the quality of teachers. All kids are entitled to the same size classes and the same quality of teachers. If necessary to get a fair distribution in quality of teachers, then pay teachers more to teach in ghetto schools. Never mind busing, that is a colossal failure and just drags down the better kids. Mixing oranges and peaches doesn’t work. The needs of one group are different than the needs of the other. Having done this, I would allow more affluent neighborhoods to build fancier buildings, add additional art, music etc. classes, build mammoth gymnasiums and athletic fields, swimming pools, and anything else they want providing they tax themselves for these extras. Appearance means a lot to the more affluent, myself included.
Next, all police stations in urban and rural ghettoes should be be located inside schools. And half of the police force should be quality teachers who teach half a day and be a police person the other half. I don’t mean policing inside the school, the police would do their police duties like they would in any other community but they would be school based. The object here is to make the police and teachers part of the extended family of the ghetto kids. Kids tend to like their teachers, and if half of their teachers are also police, then they grow up liking both teachers and police. And the police would then better understand and relate to the kids.
Next, if I had my way, most churches would be located in a ghetto in simple buildings. I know this would outrage parishioners, at least maybe wake them up. Most people live, in our urban and suburban world, close enough to an urban, suburban, or rural ghetto. And if they can traipse their butt some distance to get to WalMart to buy their bargains, they can travel an equal distance to get to church. Why should churches be located in ghettoes when ghettoes are near by? Because that , in every religion, is the arena of greatest need . If the foremost religious responsibility is to administer to the needs of the poor, the different, those with mental and physical limitations, the oppressed, the trapped, those most in need of ‘someone’ to be there for them----if all this is valid, then it seems to me one cannot be truly religious if your religion amounts to cultural, social, ritualistic pleasantries amongst a peer social group totally isolated from those of the lower socioeconomic/differing racial classes.
What good, in the last analysis, does it do to say to the 450,000 mostly ‘low life’ kids we throw in jail that “hey kid, I did what I could for you. I prayed for God to help the less fortunate, put a little money in a collection plate, served on committees at church, participated in communion, helped serve turkey dinners to the homeless on Thanksgiving----who the fuck do you think pays the taxes for the street that runs through your ghetto? After all I have have done ‘for you’ look at you and what you are.” Then we wonder, if we make a wrong turn and end up face to face with one of these kids, yet to be jailed, why they have that hard stare and might want to kick the shit out of us. All their lives they, like we, have needed others to be there for them, but for them hardly anyone was. Imagine the nerve of these slimy youthful dregs, living in conditions that bring them face to face daily with violence, disease, poor diets, and unemployment----imagine these little bastards trying to get their crummy paws on some of our money by selling us the recreational drugs so many of us or our kids want to buy. These little bastards are corrupting us and our kids. I just wonder, how and where did these ghetto kids manage to meet with our ‘good’ kids and talk them into using recreational drugs? I mean, these kids get around, even infiltrate the rich kids, athletes, movie stars, musicians, etc. They are as corruptive as the prostitutes, who I also wonder where and how do they manage to hold indoctrination sessions with us or our kids? Frankly, I feel real unwanted, I just can’t recall any prostitutes pulling me aside and corrupting me with lengthy sermons on the wonderful world of paying for sex. For me, it seems, if I want to pay for sex, I have to go to them,seek them out. And it is the same with recreational drug use, these sellers don’t exactly come knocking on my door.
It is time Christianity returned to it’s roots. In the face of injustice Christians, sure-enough true Christians, may not look the other way. If we could read the tragicodramatic history of these 450,000 ‘kids’ we so gleefully punish, perhaps we would find in each life enough grief and suffering to make us stop wishing anything more on them. Most are not just dirt poor economically, but wallow through life in moral poverty. Moral poverty is the poverty of being without loving, capable, responsible adults who habituate them to feel joy at other’s joy, pain at other’s pain, happiness when they do right, remorse when they do wrong. The mandatory pledge of allegiance in classrooms is not an issue with me, but I do wonder about the thoughts of 10 yr. old ghetto kids when they realize the flag which they are required to pledge allegiance to, along with everyone else, has not pledged any allegiance to them. Even Iraqis are now ahead of them on the allegiance/help is on the way scale. All the various religious prophets spent their time among the poor, the different, and those with the most needs in society. That is the core of Christianity. There is nothing wrong, if some so choose, to meet in their own neighborhoods to sing hymns, carry on rituals, play bingo, have social get-togethers etc. There is nothing wrong with any of this sort of stuff, but it is not religion. Neither is spending a lot of money on glittering massive cathedrals. Compared to the practices of all major religious founders, building such glittering temples is almost paganistic. Jesus nor any of the others ever suggested people do such a thing. The goal of religion is always to go forth and lend a hand to the less fortunate----directly. If churches are located in the urban and rural ghettoes then it provides poor kids with access to quality extended family. Every kid deserves at least some quality uncles, aunts, grandmas, and grandpas. And since reproductive responsibility at this point in time necessitates limiting the number of children, everyone would have the time to be part of some kid’s extended family. All this stuff is what Christianity should be about. The rest is just irrelevant. No one is being told to stop doing a lot of things they insist is important to their lives. Keep doing it, but quit calling it religion. It is not. To those who insist they want to have their own religious school system, well, I would not stop them, but the federal govt. should not pay a penny for them to do so. I am not aware that Jesus ever encouraged his followers to isolate themselves from others, let alone spend time running school systems to further achieve such isolation. But I certainly would not make it illegal. What needs so desperately to be changed is the public school system.
Of course as part of all this above, the War on Drugs would have to be abandoned, and recreational drug use be an exercise in education and drug abuse treatment centers---for all, not just the affluent. I am at the point now on this topic where I wish to be quite blunt. If the majority insists they want recreational drug use to be illegal, of course for all except their recreational drug of choice, then ok, make these drugs illegal but only for the users. And give the users the mandatory 10 year sentences, no exceptions. That will spread the war to all neighborhoods, drastically change the racial and economic population of those in prison, and then let’s see just how long the affluent allow their kids to be jailed for recreational drug use. Suddenly education and treatment will seem so reasonable, so merciful, so Christian. In fact that is one more area church members can become active---working with those who need help with drug abuse.
There are a hell of lot of things we could all do, personally, to help those in greatest need. I was all for freeing Willy the whale, am all for no more Vietnams, am all for respecting the civil rights of others who march to differing drums, but I am most of all for freeing the 450,000 young people, in jail under our drug laws, from our jails and ensuring that all kids get a chance, a fair chance, to become useful, productive citizens of this country and world. If we could start here, I think all the other problems of the globe would then start to fall in place to similar solutions. We need to start addressing problems, not ignoring them or compounding them. “The failure to look reality in the face diminishes a nation as it diminishes a person....The American nation is in desperate need of honest self-examination. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations” (James Baldwin). We need all face reality: “Planet Earth is 4.1 billion years old. If we scale this inconceivably vast time span down to a more manageable 46 years, then modern man has been around for 4 hrs., and the Industrial Revolution began 1 minute ago. During those 60 seconds of modern biological time, man has multiplied his numbers to plague proportions, ransacked the planet for fuels and raw materials, and caused the extinction of countless species of animals and plants” (Jonathan Porritt).
I am aware most people would probably not dispute a lot of the above, but would just say it is all unrealistic, that people would never go along with such drastic changes in priorities and religious practices. Quite true and that is why I am not convinced Bush should lose. Most people think our overstuffed, greed infested, violence addicted pig at the trough government can right itself with just some tinkering here and there. I see the situation as past tinkering, past making some minor adjustments, and our wonderful experiment in government is, like every other global empire which preceded it, on the verge of self destruction. Until the people, en mass, especially the young, are willing to wage a revolution as redemptive as the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movements, or the sexual revolution, our goose is cooked. I don’t think the people are ready yet for real change. They sense things are not going right, but the forces in control of our govt. have amassed a lot of ‘THINGS’ most of us, fortunate to be front and center at the trough, want protected so change---real change, threatens the status quo. Sacrifice, justice, tolerance, charitableness, and any sincere commitment to the welfare of all humanity/environment is missing from our national psyche. Maybe four more years of Bush is the only way to generate the needed real revolution. Then again four more years of Bush might seal our fate. It would be nice to know just how close we American lemmings are to the edge of the cliff, just how much time we can afford to keep running nose-to-ass, blinders firmly in place, circling the wagons here and there, with bombs bursting in air, while all through the night our enemies amass in greater and greater numbers, picking away at stragglers, mutilating our ‘liberators’, and baiting us with incessant taunting. Sherman had his march across Georgia, Bush has his march across the globe. The scorched earth policy worked for Sherman, will it work for Bush? It hasn’t worked for Israel, but then that is such a small arena compared to the arena Bush has staked out as his eminent domain. Who says Bush is not a big thinker? His personal notions and religious beliefs are going to rule the world. Haven’t we seen this before in World History?
The life and example set by Abraham Lincoln serves, in my mind, to bolster the arguments put forth here. When people refer to Lincoln as a self made man starting with the humblest origins, they usually refer to his acquisition of career and power. But Lincoln was a self made man in more important respects. His religious, moral, and social values he constructed himself, he simply did not choose to inherit the ideas, beliefs, or habits of others. His power of concentration on any subject that interested him was unique and powerful. By any normal standards Lincoln should have been an outcast in every community he grew up in or lived in at a young age. In a society of hunters, Lincoln did not hunt; among fishermen Lincoln did not fish; among many who were cruel to animals. Lincoln was kind. He shot a turkey at eight years of age and vowed he would never shoot another animal again. Surrounded by farmers, Lincoln had no interest in farming; In a community in which men smoked and chewed, Lincoln never used tobacco; in a rough, profane society, Lincoln did not swear; in a social world in which fighting was a regular male activity, Lincoln was a peacemaker; in a hard-drinking society, Lincoln did not drink; in a society seeped with hostility to Indians, Lincoln resisted it; in a southern-flavored setting soft on slavery, Lincoln always opposed it; in a white world with strong racial antipathies, Lincoln was generous to blacks; in an environment indifferent to education, Lincoln cared about education intensely; in a family active in church Lincoln abstained (the only family member not to be baptized). Aside from the fact I always am intrigued by Lincoln, there are two things here of note, one of which relates to the question of legalizing recreational drug use.
Because Lincoln never drank, the temperance/prohibition crowd pestered him to endorse their movement. He would not because he believed every person needed to accept responsibility for their own vices and personal behaviors. Lincoln liked to differentiate between bad choices and immoral behavior. The government was not there to prevent bad choices, and would not succeed on any account. While Lincoln was personally abstentatious, he did not join in the evangelistic and moralistic teetotalism and the use of the law to prohibit alcohol that marked the movement. In fact he explicitly rejected any claim of superiority on the part of nondrinkers and of temperance advocates over those who were then called drunkards. Rejection of others for their poor choices Lincoln found ‘repugnant’, ‘uncharitable’, and ‘feelingless’. Rather, Lincoln cautioned, those like himself who never fell victim to drink “have been spared more from absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have (abused alcohol)”. Lincoln saw the need of those who abused recreational drugs as one for help, not condemnation. He thought it particularly useless to run around wrapped in a cocoon of moral superiority telling those making bad choices they were going to hell. He liked to tell this story: ‘Paddy’, who stole a shovel, was told that he would pay for it at Judgment Day. “By the powers” Paddy responds, “if ye’ll credit me so long, I’ll take another”. Lincoln was accepted by all around him because he did not prejudge the particular choices of others when it came to things like vocations, drug use, religious beliefs etc. He projected no airs of his being better than others. But the second thing that interests me here is that rather than be ostracized while growing up, Lincoln was highly popular among his peers. Apparently he was popular because he made his friends laugh and think. He was also strong as an ox which prevented any sinister peer from physically assaulting him. When he was mobilized into the armed forces to hunt down an Indian tribe, he was elected Captain of his unit. The only Indian his unit ever came across was an Indian whom his men captured and were going to kill. Lincoln was the lone opposition to killing him, challenging anyone to a fight with the weapon of their choice if they wanted to override him. They let the Indian go. Imagine Lincoln standing idly by today while the courts take a 18 yr. old ghetto kid and throw him in jail for 10 yrs. for selling a drug less harmful than alcohol. William Miller, who belonged to a different military unit said this: “His Men idolized him. Lincoln’s Unit was the hardest set of men I ever saw. No man but Lincoln could do anything with them and Lincoln was their idol and there was not a man but what was obedient to every word he spoke and would fight to his death for Lincoln.” This makes me think of Eugene Watson, my high school history teacher who had the same sort of effect on the rougher crowd. This may be an over generalization, but it seemed to me, while I was teaching, that the most moral students tended to be self made, not products of a strict religious family. Students raised in strict religious settings tended (there are exceptions) to be standoffish, snobbish, intolerant, indifferent to the plight of the less fortunate, and sort of shallow---rigid, with indoctrinated braces on their brains. It seems strange that most do not let their parents choose who they marry, their vocation, the music they like, their hobbies etc. and yet most across the globe just accept the religion of their parents. If religion is so important, sometimes important enough to kill, how can this be?
An analysis of Lincoln’s take on morality is relevant to this musing on recreational drug use. Lincoln, of all the Presidents, spent more time analyzing moral issues than probably any other President and, as a consequence, probably represents our most important leader on moral issues. To Lincoln, moral principles stand or fall by logic and reason. Therefore moral principles cannot be inherited via religious dogmas. To claim legitimacy of a moral precept based on inherited religious dogma is akin to the argument of a parent to a child: “It is right (or wrong) because I say it is so”. Accepting a moral principle on the basis of reason and logic, according to Lincoln, does not confer any moral superiority on the believer. This aspect of Lincoln’s nature is what distinguished him from most of the others opposed to slavery. Lincoln’s battle was always to bring moral principles into wider use, not persecute the offenders. “They (the Southern people) are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up”. The real battle, the eternal battle, according to Lincoln, was the battle between the selfishness of man’s nature and man’s intrinsic love of justice. These principles said Lincoln, “are an eternal antagonism”. He also believed only a small percentage of those who come into the world are natural tyrants. In the Lincolnesque concept of ethics and morality each person, in his own way must struggle with his own selfishness and his own sense of justice, lest moral laws become a far off abstraction utterly separated from intrinsic daily life (vis a vis organized religion). Proper leadership then, is really one of creating an environment in which the love of justice dominates over the selfishness of man’s nature. Advancement towards a more moral society is via education and leadership, not personal damnations or legalizing religious dogmas not defendable via reason and logic, or the persecution of offenders not breaking any existing laws which protect the rights of others. The key ingredient of our noble experiment in government, to Lincoln, is the Jeffersonian right of every citizen to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This of course includes the right to use the recreational drug of your choice. It also includes the right to control your own dying process. It also includes the right to practice your own religious beliefs and not be forced, by any laws, to follow the religious beliefs of others. Abe would agree with Barry that ‘moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”, and Lincoln certainly demonstrated that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”. Ok, just had to sneak in a little Lincoln here and add moral behavior is by no means limited to organized religion. Lincoln, Jefferson and George Washington are prime examples.
I stressed the importance of education as a major tool to combat recreational drug abuse. The average person’s understanding of recreational drug abuse is abysmal. The typical mentality goes thusly: Recreational drug use can ruin one’s life, including health, family relationships, job security, and social life. Therefore recreational drug use is bad, people who use these drugs are bad, those who sell them worse, bad things should be illegal, and bad people incarcerated, the longer the better. So it goes, except for the two most popular recreational drugs, nicotine and alcohol. Even though these are the two most toxic recreational drugs, with these two drugs it is up to the individual to show responsible use. There is of course no responsible use of nicotine except nonuse since it is very toxic in many cases and very addictive. The average American thinks the other recreational drugs are more toxic, more addictive, and somehow more dangerous. What they really mean is that the kind of people known to use these drugs and the whole atmosphere surrounding procurement and use are the targets of their anger.
Recreational drug abuse (not use), except for nicotine, is really a symptom of a need for emotional or mental help. Pain is a symptom of physical damage to the body. We don’t jail people in pain, we treat them, try to cure the cause of the pain. Sometimes we can cure the cause and sometimes we can’t. An elevated body temperature is a symptom. We don’t jail people with elevated body temperatures, we try to cure the cause of the elevated body temperature. Recreational drug abuse is a symptom, a symptom of mental distress, and we ought to try to cure the cause of the problem. The problem of drug abuse is invariably the stresses associated with the abuser’s lifestyle, living conditions, social interactions, or a chemical imbalance in their brain. The wonder is not that some people abuse recreational drugs, the wonder is that we all don’t. In the case of alcohol there is sometimes a hereditary component that predisposes abuse and some people should therefore not use alcohol at all. It also needs to be understood that there is such a thing as responsible recreational drug use and that more people manage responsible recreational drug use than manage recreational drug abuse. It is not a moral sin to occasionally get high, of course with responsible limitations. I drink a glass of wine with every evening meal, except when I eat out and then I am too cheap. I know why I do it, because it creates a certain mellowness, maybe puts me in the mood to think up a musing (smile). People often use a recreational drug in some social situations, to elevate their mood or eliminate inhibitions. With some of the main recreational drugs one has to be careful not to create a medical problem. Nicotine, alcohol, and cocaine are in this category. The medical costs of nicotine and alcohol use is staggering. Nicotine use is all physical damage, alcohol can be both physically and mentally damaging, while the other drugs are usually more dangerous in terms of psychological quirks. There is definitely such a thing as the responsible use of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Cocaine and heroin use will always be more associated with ghettoes since these drugs are used to provide relief from being boxed into an unbearable environment (socially, economically, medically).
One needs to remember that many good things can become addictive and damage one’s health, one’s family, one’s job, etc. Eating habits, considering all the associated consequent problems which can lead to death, is the number one killer in this country. Do we pass laws making certain eating habits illegal? Do we jail anyone who sells junk food?
Of course not, this is an individual responsibility. Should those who abuse food be persecuted, despised, or ridiculed? Of course not since the reasons why some abuse food are complicated and varied. Some people couldn’t gain weight if they tried. Gambling can become an addiction, religion can become an addiction, the pursuit of money can become an addiction, shopping can become an addiction, sex can become an addiction. And the list goes on. In some respects too much of anything can become a bad thing. Would anyone like to tabulate the number of people in the world killed or oppressed because of the religious fervor of some? Are we therefore to make religion illegal? I admit, there are times when one looks at what is done in the name of religion, and one is tempted to disown religion, or at least organized religion.
The next thing one needs to realize is that the abuse of recreational drugs is not all that much dependent on the legality. If one has a need for heroin to make life tolerable, one will find it. If one has a need to gamble, one will. If one has a need for certain kinds of sex or just becomes obsessed with having sex, one finds an outlet. Prostitution will always be there. Homosexuality will always be there. Only fools and those with braces on their brains think they can pass laws to stop these things. There is more misery and damage done by those who want to use the law to make everyone else carbon copies of themselves or prey upon the personal shortcomings of others, than is ever done by those who fail to responsibly control their use of recreational drugs. If anyone thinks it is remotely amusing to take the least toxic of all the recreational drugs, the least likely to ruin anyone’s life or health----marijuana----and then give a decade jail sentence to those young ghetto kids who sell it---well there is something real sick about that sense of humor. Every youth in jail for simply selling recreational drugs, with no charges of violence involved, all 450,000, should be freed, given some career training opportunities, and provided with whatever social support they need to recover from the damage society has done to them.
Imagine if you were dirt poor, a single parent, living in a dump with bars on the window, and the police nailed your son for selling drugs on the corner, money he shared with you to provide food to eat, money he badly wanted so he could buy nice clothes, or get a car, or whatever---and he gets a prison sentence of like 10 years and put in a jail on the other side of the state so you can’t even visit more than like once a year. These are kids---these are real parents----where the hell are family values here? Family values for many has a confined conceptual range, applying only to a particular family, socioeconomic, or religious framework. These damn kids might have sold some dope to your own kid---if your own kid is messed up with mental stresses or confused emotional states, and then seeks drugs for relief, or maybe just wants to use recreational drugs as an experiment, then God surely knows the kid who sells him the drugs has got to be punished. And if your kid shoots someone, jail the person who sold him the gun, not your kid. Of course your kid is basically a good kid. If your kid has a little tete a tete with a prostitute, jail the prostitute, your kid would never do that sort of thing without being enticed into it. If your kid steals a car parked outside a store while the person runs in to buy a paper, it is the guy who is dumb enough to leave his car running while he dashed into the store---it was entrapment. We all tend to be blinded----protect our own congenerous genetic and social associates, jail others. I understand this is human nature, but legitimate government and unbiased ethics protects all citizens, does not allow the persecution of some to protect the imperfections of others.
The injustice achieved by jailing youthful rural/urban recreational drug peddlers for decade sentences is a question of no small magnitude. Of the 2 million (2,019,234) individuals in jail in this country, 450,000 are there on non violent drug related offenses. This ‘Christian’ nation has the highest percentage of our citizens behind bars than any other country in the world, having recently overtaken Russia for the leadership here. There is no way any reasonable person can read the teachings of Christ and conclude any Christian community, remotely committed to the teachings of Christ, could ever be the leader in jailing their brethren. Our current jail population represents 22% of all the people in jail in the whole world. How did this become the American way? Perhaps we became ethically or religiously lethargic, it is easier to jail then to be there for those in need. Everything about this industry of incarceration reeks with injustice. In 1980 there were 40,000 drug offenders locked up. The law and order fanatics subsequently gained the upper hand, except for any reduction in the use of these illegal recreational drugs. This being the case, no reduction in recreational drug use, it is not possible, from any logical standpoint, to defend our current policies except to insist jailing 450,000 young poor kids is a moral good. And it gets worse. The percentage of people using these illegal recreational drugs is about the same for the black, Latino, and white population in this country. The black and latino population comprises roughly 20% of our population. Do they represent 20% of those in jail for recreational drug offenses? Hardly. 75% of those in jail for recreational drug offenses are black or Latino. This can be sliced and analyzed anyway one wants but what is left, when the dust settles, is a blatant mean spirited assault on the young poor and especially young poor blacks and latinos. Whether admitted or not, the only effect of our War on Drugs is to lock up as many of the poor kids, especially the minority ones, as we possibly can----get them out of sight and out of mind. The cost for this sadistic pleasure is somewhere between $25,000-$40,000 per prisoner per year.
On numbers alone, the 450,000 jailed recreational drug offenders is one eighth the number of slaves in this country 150 years ago, and easily matches the consequences to the victims. Southerners, of course, never referred to their slaves as victims. Those who support our recreational drug laws do not see these jailed youths as victims either. A lot of people in the ghetto do not see them as victims. People, after all, die from these gang rivalries. Like slavery, the current policies relating to recreational drug use and sale have generated a massive industry---to the tune of billions every year. To legalize recreational drug use, to relegate recreational drug use to individual responsibility, to concentrate our policies on education and treatment---is not, on the surface, such an outrageous alternative. Few can argue current policies have worked, reduced recreational drug use, or done much to provide most recreational drug abusers any relief. To redirect our efforts, to take this new approach, is not even risky. It could be stopped any time, revoked if necessary. “I’d support it (legalization of recreational drugs) just to see what would happen” (Barry Goldwater). Why then, it must be asked, is the current system so untouchable?
Like slavery, it has the same kind of economic and philosophical roots. The War on Drugs is a massive industry. If the war on Drugs, as fought today in this country, were stopped the economic ramifications would send this country, already economically fragile, into economic depression. On paper, to give these 450,000 ‘kids’ back their lives, among the costs, in no particular order would be:
1. Politicians would lose one of their most effective tools to get elected (tough on crime).
2. Parents and kids would have to assume personal responsibility for their use of recreational drugs. The fear is pervasive that if legal, kids and many of us would race out to become recreational drug abusers. There is no evidence of this in the history of the world and recreational drugs of various sorts, varying according to location and culture, have been around for many centuries.
3. Police would lose their easiest ticket to promotion---collaring ghetto kids (and prostitutes).
4 The number of police needed would be markedly reduced
5. The number of Correctional Officers needed would be markedly reduced
6. The number of parole officers needed would be markedly reduced
7. Court loads and the number of people needed to handle court loads would be markedly reduced.
8. Fewer kids in rural and urban ghettos would drop out of school and school costs would go up.
9. There would be a temporary increase in property thefts
10. The number of lawyers needed would be markedly reduced.
11. If the prison population were to fall by 450,000 @$30,000/yr. per inmate to house and feed them---then the number of supporting employees to provide such goods and services would drop markedly. That alone is a $13 billion dollar hit on our economy. The economic hit is higher here though than losing 450,000 inmates to feed and house---substantially higher. For example, in Chicago alone, 40% of homicides are attributed to hostilities between drug dealing gangs. Still, the supporters of this War on Drugs refuse to see it. The murder rate in this country rose with the start of Alcohol prohibition, remained high during alcohol prohibition, then declined for 11 consecutive years after alcohol prohibition ended. One suspects this is of little matter to the religious right since the current victims are seen as evil disposable diabolical ogres
Clearly, the economic burden for letting go of this war would be massive.
And the cost would not just be economic. The anger of the religious right would rise to a record crescendo. The immorality of recreational drug use (selectively) is one of those moral sins created by the religious right with no such biblical mandate. I don’t think it too unfair to state that almost all of the current emotional energies of the religious right are on matters with little or no biblical foundation and certainly were not any major theme of the religious founders. Of course it is not just the religious right---most Americans have philosophical reasons for opposing legalization of recreational drugs. I separate the two populations because most Americans are susceptible to logic and reason on moral issues. Genuine goodness is the same, whether found inside or outside organized religion. Perhaps at some point the non faith based portion of the public can be galvanized to understand one of the worst sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit. Ghetto kids don’t need to be our designated illegal suppliers for our use of recreational drugs. What ghetto kids need, during their formative years, is a sense of security and the ability to dream about wishes for a future that is hopeful---and attainable. Ironically, the affluent will never be secure themselves while life is insecure for millions of the poor. It is better to be branded a heretic, helping children of God out of ghetto gutters where the Churches and us have thrown them, then to live isolated from them, muttering under our breath, ‘the wages of sin is death’ (or sesquipedalian terms of incarceration). The religious right insist their faith based religious views are for the salvation of others---you can usually identify the others by their hunted expression. Moral issues for the religious right are faith based, any right or wrong once accepted as part of their faith becomes etched in stone. A religious ‘righter’ does not see him/her self as being mean to anyone on issues like recreational drug use, abortion, homosexuality, control over dying, religious prayers in schools, dress codes, sexual behaviors, marriage rights, suicide, unrestrictive accumulation of wealth, inheritance protection laws/shelters, underfunding education for the poor, opposition to universal health care, etc. The charge made here has nothing to do with moral superiority. The people of the north, during slavery, were not, in the broadest sense, a morally superior lot than the people of the south. Still, slavery was morally wrong. The object is to right moral wrongs in order to further justice in society. Holding as the religious right does, that the use of selected recreational drugs is morally wrong, and socially regressive, they cannot, as an act of faith, cease to demand full national recognition of their faith as a legal fact and social blessing. In their faith based prejudices they are as confident as Cleopatra’s pussy. Each difficult battle to bring justice to more and more in our short American history has never been led by the religious right. Isn’t it strange that some of those most determined to live a moral life have found themselves, throughout American history, relegated to playing, at best, a reluctant role in the battles to bring more justice and fairness to those so denied it in this land of the free? They are not so much immoral as just boxed in. Beliefs based primarily on faith, not reason and logic, cannot be altered without questioning all the other beliefs based on faith. Faith based religion, in it’s purest form, is an all or nothing endeavor rooted in inherited dogmas. To bring justice and salvation to these 450,000 young people in our jails is no small task. It will take a Lincolnesque type leader, using the powers of logic, reason, and sense of justice, to stop this War on Drugs. The religious right will never change, that is a given. It is difficult to achieve a dialectic buzz session, let alone achieve logical resolution on any moral issue with those who use inherited religious dogma couched in a tone of preemptory moral certitude. They seek moral goals but are trapped. Led mostly by living clerical fossils, who mutter away to themselves in isolated chapels, ignored often even by their own parishioners--- the inability to change is the albatross faith based religionists carry around their neck. Faith based virtue with the consequent intolerance of, and anger towards others, then becomes its own punishment. Radical religionists are not exactly known as ‘happy campers’.
How to stop this war and avoid the economic consequences is the key trick. There has to be a transition period, you can’t, for economic reasons, just close down a multi billion dollar industry with roots all over our economic tree. If education and treatment centers were to become the revised War on, not recreational drug use, but recreational drug abuse, then you don’t lay off police, correctional officers, parole officers, court system employees, and the millions who work presently to supply food and housing for prisoners. You don’t lay off these people, you transfer them and incorporate new workers too. We stop building prisons, we build treatment centers, we convert prisons, no longer being used, to treatment centers or educational schools, we staff treatment centers, not prisons. If we need less police, we will need more teachers---kids won’t drop out to make a living selling recreational drugs anymore. Take the billions of dollars spent to feed prisoners and use the money to seed businesses to return to ghettoes. The ghettos will still be poor, like ghettos were always poor, but with the gang drug turf violence gone, ghettos will be like before this massive War on Drugs---a lot less ridden with crime. With jobs available requiring a high school diploma, more kids will stay in school. To hell with Iraq, let us bring the reality of the American dream back into the lives of the 450,000 poor kids we jail for trying to improve their economic status. Let us uplift our own poor youth, not stand astride the necks of the least amongst us, those most in need of someone to be there for them. Let us engage, as we so ought, the eternal battle described by Lincoln: “the battle between the selfishness of man’s nature and man’s intrinsic love of justice”. In this case it is the selfishness of trying to protect ourselves and our kids from personal responsibility to control recreational drug use, versus the injustice of jailing ghetto kids for the poor choices of others. We have all kinds of choices to make with recreational drug use and many make poor choices and will continue to do so regardless of any legal restraints.
Not too long ago I saw this movie called ‘Midnight Express’. The claim is the movie is a true story. It won some kind of Oscar for something or other. It was not the intent of the movie, nor perceived by viewers, as a reflection of just how irrational and unjust we are about recreational drug use in this country. In this movie a young American preppy couple were vacationing in Turkey. The young man decides to smuggle in some pot to take home and share with his friends. He gets nailed at the airport in Turkey on his way home. He is treated very meanly and roughly by the Turkish police and courts, given 4 yrs. in jail, then after review, he is given a life sentence. We see the anguish the boy’s mother, father, and girlfriend go through, we see the hopelessness of his life in a Turkish jail where he is both physically and mentally abused until his sense of reality is pathetically distorted. After many years he either knocks out or kills the warden, dresses in his uniform, and escapes from prison, makes his way to Greece, and then home to America where he is welcomed as a hero. The point, of course is that the Turks are cruel, unsympathetic, intolerant brutes who revel in torturing young kids for minor indiscretions. Most of the countries where these recreational drug crops are grown, and have been grown for centuries, see it differently. We keep demanding that they get tough on the growers and the sellers of these drugs to Americans and they keep demanding that our government should stop the demand for these drugs if we don’t want our people to use them. In these countries there is no higher percentage of drug abusers than there are alcoholic or nicotine addicts in this country. Nixon was President at the time and he demanded forcefully that Turkey (and others) demonstrate they were serious about drug smuggling to our country or else their financial aid would be reduced. So of course they catch a smuggler, this American kid, and they give him a life sentence, I suppose rhetorically asking us, “is that tough enough for you?”. Aside from all of this, I too felt anger and sympathy over what this poor kid went through. But of course I also wonder why we cannot show the same anger and sympathy for our ghetto kids that we do the same thing to? At least this affluent kid had a lot of family, money, dignitaries, and lawyers fighting to get him released. Young Cornrow Kinkhead from Watts, arrested for the same crime, instead of tears (except maybe from his mom and siblings) there is only the regret the police had not shot him to death or had given him life instead of 10-12 years.
Radical off the wall me, the Morningside Olympic Champ, the TV film star, the ‘swinger’, the guy who sits these days in a King Tut throne chair, suggests every sizable community have a Community Help Center, open to all citizens, located right in ghettos, where any citizen can go when they feel overwhelmed by the stresses of their life, for help. Inside this Help Center would be the appropriate govt. agencies, volunteer organizations, and all organized religious groups. Let these varied groups compete to justify their existence. This Center would also register every child at birth and see to it that every child will have some quality extended family. Distance or personal situations/limitations of biological relatives may require adding uncles, aunts, grandmas and grandpas for many kids. Personally I think it would be great if the extended family of a kid included varied races, religions, etc. We all, even the busiest among us, can find time to maintain meaningful relationships with those in need. “What is faith”, Gandhi said, “If it is not translated into action.” Close down military bases across the globe, use the money to help all countries across the globe establish similar Help Centers, and reinstitute the draft for everyone---this time 2 yrs. after high school and two years after retirement for community service at these Help Centers. Each time a citizen is personally assigned to act to improve the lot of the less fortunate, or empowered to strike out against injustice he/she then, as directed by all the religious founders, is sending out a tiny ripple of hope, and these ripples, crossing each other from a million different centers of individual caring, build a current strong enough to sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice. With these Help Centers in place and most all of our citizens engaged, early and late in their lives, maybe then, and only then should we have the right to call ourselves a Christian nation or the Land of Lincoln, or use that word compassionate as part of any political slogan. Fuck teaching kids how to kill, how to use violence to resolve disputes, how to get themselves killed over misplaced patriotic fervor, or how to stand around in foreign countries until someone blows up their ass. Peace need not be impractical and war need not be inevitable. Contacts among nations, religions, economic classes, or political groups need not be transformed into an exchange of death threats. Help people help the environment, help save plant and animal species, practice responsible reproductive limitations, and in essence become genuine religious disciples, practicing religion as Jesus and Buddha, and the other founders of religion practiced it, and instructed their followers to practice it. Using logic based ethics the environment comes first, people second, and unrestrained profits last. The cultivation and expansion of this mania to need more and more THINGS is the antithesis of wisdom. Only a reduction of materialistic needs can promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war. Only responsible reproduction can save the future. If we don’t change directions we will end up where we are going. With these Help Centers ethics becomes a global circle around our now global economy, a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
If a certain amount of violence is required to give meaning or zest to our life, then we can take the largest ornate cathedrals, turn them into arenas open to the public, free of charge, to watch our current illustrious world leaders like Kaddafi, Bush, Hussein, Bin Laden, Pat Robertson, Cheney, Rumsfeld, certain Cardinals, certain Moslem clerics, Jerry Faulwell, and others of similar ilk--- be released from their pens and let them snarl and attack each other, a fight to the death, all in the name of their various perceived causes. Bush of course would get to wear a bomber jacket and carry bombs stored in his every orifice and other weapons of mass destruction gripped by his every appendage. May the most arrogant, intolerant, militaristic and pigheaded of the lot be the last standing. Then may the good Lord carry the victor and beaten opponents off to meet with the ghosts of all those who died or suffered at the hands of their policies and beliefs. I myself won’t be at the cathedral. All in all, given the choice, I would rather tip toe through the tulips with Tiny Tim. At least there would be no victims. I am tired of victims, of disposable ghetto kids, disposable species, disposable soldiers, and being led down the path of militaristic self serving greed glutted theocratic corpocracy.
A May/June 2004 Musing
R. S. James
Because I expended a greater effort, including partial revisions, this musing got lengthy. In the effort to be concise, clear, and get to the hub of this matter I got frustrated by the limitations of the human mind. Unfettered thinking on moral principles invariably becomes an inextricable Gordian knot. If we think enough, if we live long enough, maybe we end up clueless, the certainty of youth evaporated. Logical panoramic thought is laborious. It is easier to turn on something electronic and be amused. Truth, it is said, will set you free. But before it does it will make you angry. In the end “the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple”(Oscar Wilde). If I tend to harp on the selected topic for this musing it is a reflection of just how outrageous and cruel this business is of destroying lives of the young before they ever really have a chance to escape the fate imposed on them by others. And the others is us in a collective fashion. The 35,000 soldiers who died in Vietnam was a tragedie (Fr) and a disgrace that most Americans, including myself, were compliant participants. We believed our purpose was noble---to bring democracy to Vietnam and protect us and the world from a hostile communist threat to national and global security. It was all bullshit. Vietnam was a sovereign artificially divided country with the right and obligation to determine it’s own form of government and they posed no threat to anyone’s security. The 600 or so American soldiers who have died in Iraq already and who will die in what is clearly likely to be a long siege, is being considered by more and more a similar tragedy. Old people dying is not a cataclysmic tragadie, it is a part of life, it comes with the gift of life, it is unavoidable and a natural event. Young people whose lives are needlessly sacrificed---terminated early in their productive years---by deliberate actions of those who should be protecting them, these deaths are the disgraceful deaths, the preventable deaths. If you are going to die young, it ought be for a worthwhile cause, as a last resort, or it is tragic. Any parent who loses a son or daughter at a young age from a disease or condition knows the cruelty of losing a life before the person really had a chance to develop their potential and enjoy the many good things life has to offer.
But when it comes to the wanton destruction of young lives in this country nothing compares remotely to the 450,000 young people imprisoned long term for selling varied recreational drugs to those who have chosen to use them. For the most part, you may as well line these young people up and just slowly strangle the Promethean breath of life, the vitality of life, from them.. Their life is over: death by sesquipedalian terms of incarceration. Born into an environment they did not create, cornered into seemingly hopeless poverty, jailed for a decade or more with the worst of peers, they emerge from prison middle aged, emotionally and mentally damaged, no skills, no friends, and little or no prospect of gainful employment, social fulfillment, or good health. On a comparable basis, in many respects, those who died in Vietnam or Iraq at least mercifully died in a short period of time. These 450,000 young people, mostly from black urban or white rural ghettoes, die the slow cruel death of abandoned lonely ‘nothingburgers’. Let’s put this 450,000 ‘legal and religious coup de grace’ purge in proper perspective. It is almost 13 times the number of our soldiers killed in Vietnam. It is 3 times the number of soldiers currently in Iraq. It is almost as many who died in the Civil War. It is more than Hussein is purported to have killed over a 20 yr. period. It probably exceeds the number of pages of all my musings.
To me, the first and foremost obligation of any society is to protect and nurture the less fortunate. This trickle down bullshit is nothing more than a concocted excuse to further the financial status of the already affluent. If there were an ounce of truth to this cruel hoax, then the share of the financial pie for the non 5 and 10 percenters would be growing, not shrinking. As part of our communal obligation, the first and primary effort at rebuilding areas devastated by war should be our own war ravaged communities. The War on Drugs, like any other war, generates casualties, creates war zones, drives out businesses and all those who can afford to live elsewhere. Whatever the good intentions, after 40 years of failure, this war is a wicked iniquitous war. It has accomplished nothing, we hardly lead the world in having the least drug problems, recreational drug use is as rampant as ever, what is legal is not based on medical toxicity, but on majority rule. When the govt. tried to make illegal a drug used by the majority, namely alcohol, they abandoned such a war because of the crime such prohibition caused. We tolerate this current war for two reasons only---the drugs involved are not the recreational drugs used by the majority of us, and the devastation caused by this war is mostly limited to the ghettoes across the land. This indifference to the plight of these areas is a national disgrace.
I believe recreational drug use is best controlled by education and rehabilitation. That is the approach we take to alcohol and nicotine and that is the approach we should take with the others. If a small portion of the money being spent on this political and religious war on drugs were to be spent on education for all, and rehabilitation for those with recreational drug abuse problems, the gang and crime problem in the urban ghettoes would be drastically reduced. Almost all the gang stuff is over drug selling turf rights. In prohibition it was adult gangs, in this modern attempt at prohibition it is young gangs who control the turf. I know I may supererogate my attacks on organized religion, but the indifference of organized religion to the needs of the poor, minorities, and the different in our society has slowly over the years simply enraged me as no other issue has. I can’t count the number of times a young student sat in my office and poured out their frustrations on the varied stresses and burdens they faced from their environment. The problems were all over the place from family, from poverty, from gangs, from health matters, and it just goes on and on. I, of course, was just a physiologist, a Reaganistic Christian patriot with the requisite obliviousness to the needs of the least amongst us, and hardly trained to understand or solve their problems. These were the people Jesus and every other major prophet in every major religion spent their lives among. These are the people Jesus and every major prophet demanded their followers assist . I can tell you with all honesty I can’t recall a single case in which any of these students were assisted by organized religion. Early on I would often, seeking some way for them to receive assistance from some organization, suggest the student approach a church for help. Such a suggestion just generated a laugh or sigh, and in some form or fashion the student would tell me, “The churches in my neighborhood are as poor as me, just some old ladies in raggedy clothes yapping about God. The most they can do is give you a sandwich or some raggedy pants to wear. And they know nothing about the real world, just babble about being saved etc.”. Sadly, the churches in the better neighborhoods are totally wrapped up in rituals, choirs, luxurious temples, social events, meaningless sermons, ceremonies like marriages or funerals, stained glass windows, running educational schools, organizing social outings, building recreational centers, and God knows what else. Jesus spent most of his time directly dealing with those in need. Would anyone like to guess what percentage of time most ministers or priests ever spend directly with such people? Would anyone like to guess what percentage of the money contributed to an organized religion ever gets directly into the hands of those in need? And would anyone like to guess what percent of the time most affluent parishioners of organized religion ever spend in direct contact with those most in need? I ceased going to church when I realized it was a waste of my time and none of the robotic like ceremonies I participated in had anything to do with real religion. Name one prophet in any major religion, including Jesus himself, who ever suggested expensive cathedrals be built, that children be isolated from others and taught to read and write by church members, who ever organized complicated ceremonies or rituals to be practiced, or ever suggested their followers band together, isolate themselves from the poor, the different, minorities and any others most in need. Finally, what religious founder, Jesus or any of the others, ever suggested religious leaders need be college degreed and salaried?
I feel real uncomfortable about those 450,000 kids we slam in jail for selling recreational drugs. To remotely suggest this is what Jesus would do to them, or Buddha, or Confucius, etc. is absurd. These kids did not elect to be born with a single parent, or to live in a ghetto, or be born into a certain religion, or to be a certain race, or be sent to the poorest schools, or to have the poorest teachers (who often despise their asses like my teacher neighbor Sue) or to be exposed to the worst of peer pressures, or to live in a neighborhood where there are no jobs, or to have a parent so low on the totem poll as to be shoved around by everyone with whom their parent comes in contact. And no real Christian nation would ever let such kids be alone, to be left surrounded by that kind of environmental baggage, living in squalor with bars on the window while Numskull Rumsfeld pitter patters his way hither and thither among his 7 chateaus in New Mexico. To say that none of us has any responsibility for these kids--- no direct responsibility---is to declare ourselves non Christians. For any minister or priest not to demand his parishioners directly assist these kids, be there for them as extended family---is to make anything else they do as ‘disciples’ of God almost irrelevant.
If a government undercover agent sets up someone, to entice them to commit a criminal act, a Judge often throws out the arrest as being an illegal setup. I charge our society sets these kids up so that as teenagers, in the absence of any other job prospect, and desperate for material possessions like the affluent have coming out of their ears---that these kids do what we have set them up to do---sell drugs on the street corner so they too can have some sort of income. What other realistic alternative do these kids have---how many of us, in the same environment, would not run the risk and try to make a few bucks? Judges complain all the time about these mandatory drug sentencing laws, fostered by political pressures, especially from the religious right . Imagine having Judges and then having sleazy politicians, egged on by religious dogmaniacs, decide how to sentence defendants. God, how bad is that?
So, it can be asked, just what are we as a society supposed to do about it? I think it starts with priorities. If this environment we allow so many kids to grow up in really is a national disgrace, then we do something about it. We can go to the moon, we can spend most of our tax monies building and using weapons of mass destruction, we can provide more and more tax breaks to the wealthy, we can irresponsibly overpopulate the earth, we can exploit our God given environment, we can spend hundreds of millions occupying Iraq, we can grease the wheel for so few to take so much from so many for decades etc. “The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking” (Albert Einstein). Well I claim, if we want to, we can rebuild urban and rural ghettoes and meet the needs of all our kids. To imprison kids by the hundreds of thousands rather than deal with their needs is the ultimate censure of our so called Christian society. I have seen sufficient numbers of these ghetto mothers and sometimes fathers in my classes. They have lived all their life with their backs up against the wall, not by their actions, but by an environment that the rest of us are collectively responsible for creating. Some of these mothers, in an evening class, would have their teenage son pick them up after class to escort them safely back home. The scenario, for me, was always kind of chilling. Mom, wanting to show her kid that she was really somebody, and making something of herself, would find reasons to chat with me after class as her kid stood there waiting. The kid would invariably give me an icy hostile stare, and if spoken to would utter the briefest and least informative response. To the kid, his mother was once again forced to grovel in her life, this time for a grade, and the kid has long since learned to hate watching his mother grovel, whether it be with the landlord, a boss, a boyfriend, a relative, etc. Of course the mom is not groveling with me about a grade, but the son sees it differently. This kid is very angry, and he has long since learned the world is just one of domination or submission---take or be taken. He will be going to jail because he has decided to be one of the takers. Fuck it, for a while he is going to be in charge and have some money. There is only today, there may be no tomorrow, and if there is a tomorrow, he has seen all around him what tomorrow will be like for those of his fettle.
So, what then should be our obligation to these kids? It starts with education and making sure every kid has a quality extended family---every damn kid. In Illinois we spend in some areas (the ghettoes) $4000 per year per kid while in others we spend $17,000 per year per kid. We ought to put a stop to that. Hell we can go millions and millions of dollars into debt to finance a War against Iraq, but there is no money for our poorest of kids to be given a good education. I understand the reality that affluent parents want their kids to be in better schools and there is no practical way anyone is going to change that. They live where they live in large part so that the school their kids go to will be better than the ones poorer kids go to. If parents want anything, they want their kids to have advantages in life. So I grant one must pander to this fact of life. I suggest the state or federal govt. control the size of classrooms and the quality of teachers. All kids are entitled to the same size classes and the same quality of teachers. If necessary to get a fair distribution in quality of teachers, then pay teachers more to teach in ghetto schools. Never mind busing, that is a colossal failure and just drags down the better kids. Mixing oranges and peaches doesn’t work. The needs of one group are different than the needs of the other. Having done this, I would allow more affluent neighborhoods to build fancier buildings, add additional art, music etc. classes, build mammoth gymnasiums and athletic fields, swimming pools, and anything else they want providing they tax themselves for these extras. Appearance means a lot to the more affluent, myself included.
Next, all police stations in urban and rural ghettoes should be be located inside schools. And half of the police force should be quality teachers who teach half a day and be a police person the other half. I don’t mean policing inside the school, the police would do their police duties like they would in any other community but they would be school based. The object here is to make the police and teachers part of the extended family of the ghetto kids. Kids tend to like their teachers, and if half of their teachers are also police, then they grow up liking both teachers and police. And the police would then better understand and relate to the kids.
Next, if I had my way, most churches would be located in a ghetto in simple buildings. I know this would outrage parishioners, at least maybe wake them up. Most people live, in our urban and suburban world, close enough to an urban, suburban, or rural ghetto. And if they can traipse their butt some distance to get to WalMart to buy their bargains, they can travel an equal distance to get to church. Why should churches be located in ghettoes when ghettoes are near by? Because that , in every religion, is the arena of greatest need . If the foremost religious responsibility is to administer to the needs of the poor, the different, those with mental and physical limitations, the oppressed, the trapped, those most in need of ‘someone’ to be there for them----if all this is valid, then it seems to me one cannot be truly religious if your religion amounts to cultural, social, ritualistic pleasantries amongst a peer social group totally isolated from those of the lower socioeconomic/differing racial classes.
What good, in the last analysis, does it do to say to the 450,000 mostly ‘low life’ kids we throw in jail that “hey kid, I did what I could for you. I prayed for God to help the less fortunate, put a little money in a collection plate, served on committees at church, participated in communion, helped serve turkey dinners to the homeless on Thanksgiving----who the fuck do you think pays the taxes for the street that runs through your ghetto? After all I have have done ‘for you’ look at you and what you are.” Then we wonder, if we make a wrong turn and end up face to face with one of these kids, yet to be jailed, why they have that hard stare and might want to kick the shit out of us. All their lives they, like we, have needed others to be there for them, but for them hardly anyone was. Imagine the nerve of these slimy youthful dregs, living in conditions that bring them face to face daily with violence, disease, poor diets, and unemployment----imagine these little bastards trying to get their crummy paws on some of our money by selling us the recreational drugs so many of us or our kids want to buy. These little bastards are corrupting us and our kids. I just wonder, how and where did these ghetto kids manage to meet with our ‘good’ kids and talk them into using recreational drugs? I mean, these kids get around, even infiltrate the rich kids, athletes, movie stars, musicians, etc. They are as corruptive as the prostitutes, who I also wonder where and how do they manage to hold indoctrination sessions with us or our kids? Frankly, I feel real unwanted, I just can’t recall any prostitutes pulling me aside and corrupting me with lengthy sermons on the wonderful world of paying for sex. For me, it seems, if I want to pay for sex, I have to go to them,seek them out. And it is the same with recreational drug use, these sellers don’t exactly come knocking on my door.
It is time Christianity returned to it’s roots. In the face of injustice Christians, sure-enough true Christians, may not look the other way. If we could read the tragicodramatic history of these 450,000 ‘kids’ we so gleefully punish, perhaps we would find in each life enough grief and suffering to make us stop wishing anything more on them. Most are not just dirt poor economically, but wallow through life in moral poverty. Moral poverty is the poverty of being without loving, capable, responsible adults who habituate them to feel joy at other’s joy, pain at other’s pain, happiness when they do right, remorse when they do wrong. The mandatory pledge of allegiance in classrooms is not an issue with me, but I do wonder about the thoughts of 10 yr. old ghetto kids when they realize the flag which they are required to pledge allegiance to, along with everyone else, has not pledged any allegiance to them. Even Iraqis are now ahead of them on the allegiance/help is on the way scale. All the various religious prophets spent their time among the poor, the different, and those with the most needs in society. That is the core of Christianity. There is nothing wrong, if some so choose, to meet in their own neighborhoods to sing hymns, carry on rituals, play bingo, have social get-togethers etc. There is nothing wrong with any of this sort of stuff, but it is not religion. Neither is spending a lot of money on glittering massive cathedrals. Compared to the practices of all major religious founders, building such glittering temples is almost paganistic. Jesus nor any of the others ever suggested people do such a thing. The goal of religion is always to go forth and lend a hand to the less fortunate----directly. If churches are located in the urban and rural ghettoes then it provides poor kids with access to quality extended family. Every kid deserves at least some quality uncles, aunts, grandmas, and grandpas. And since reproductive responsibility at this point in time necessitates limiting the number of children, everyone would have the time to be part of some kid’s extended family. All this stuff is what Christianity should be about. The rest is just irrelevant. No one is being told to stop doing a lot of things they insist is important to their lives. Keep doing it, but quit calling it religion. It is not. To those who insist they want to have their own religious school system, well, I would not stop them, but the federal govt. should not pay a penny for them to do so. I am not aware that Jesus ever encouraged his followers to isolate themselves from others, let alone spend time running school systems to further achieve such isolation. But I certainly would not make it illegal. What needs so desperately to be changed is the public school system.
Of course as part of all this above, the War on Drugs would have to be abandoned, and recreational drug use be an exercise in education and drug abuse treatment centers---for all, not just the affluent. I am at the point now on this topic where I wish to be quite blunt. If the majority insists they want recreational drug use to be illegal, of course for all except their recreational drug of choice, then ok, make these drugs illegal but only for the users. And give the users the mandatory 10 year sentences, no exceptions. That will spread the war to all neighborhoods, drastically change the racial and economic population of those in prison, and then let’s see just how long the affluent allow their kids to be jailed for recreational drug use. Suddenly education and treatment will seem so reasonable, so merciful, so Christian. In fact that is one more area church members can become active---working with those who need help with drug abuse.
There are a hell of lot of things we could all do, personally, to help those in greatest need. I was all for freeing Willy the whale, am all for no more Vietnams, am all for respecting the civil rights of others who march to differing drums, but I am most of all for freeing the 450,000 young people, in jail under our drug laws, from our jails and ensuring that all kids get a chance, a fair chance, to become useful, productive citizens of this country and world. If we could start here, I think all the other problems of the globe would then start to fall in place to similar solutions. We need to start addressing problems, not ignoring them or compounding them. “The failure to look reality in the face diminishes a nation as it diminishes a person....The American nation is in desperate need of honest self-examination. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations” (James Baldwin). We need all face reality: “Planet Earth is 4.1 billion years old. If we scale this inconceivably vast time span down to a more manageable 46 years, then modern man has been around for 4 hrs., and the Industrial Revolution began 1 minute ago. During those 60 seconds of modern biological time, man has multiplied his numbers to plague proportions, ransacked the planet for fuels and raw materials, and caused the extinction of countless species of animals and plants” (Jonathan Porritt).
I am aware most people would probably not dispute a lot of the above, but would just say it is all unrealistic, that people would never go along with such drastic changes in priorities and religious practices. Quite true and that is why I am not convinced Bush should lose. Most people think our overstuffed, greed infested, violence addicted pig at the trough government can right itself with just some tinkering here and there. I see the situation as past tinkering, past making some minor adjustments, and our wonderful experiment in government is, like every other global empire which preceded it, on the verge of self destruction. Until the people, en mass, especially the young, are willing to wage a revolution as redemptive as the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movements, or the sexual revolution, our goose is cooked. I don’t think the people are ready yet for real change. They sense things are not going right, but the forces in control of our govt. have amassed a lot of ‘THINGS’ most of us, fortunate to be front and center at the trough, want protected so change---real change, threatens the status quo. Sacrifice, justice, tolerance, charitableness, and any sincere commitment to the welfare of all humanity/environment is missing from our national psyche. Maybe four more years of Bush is the only way to generate the needed real revolution. Then again four more years of Bush might seal our fate. It would be nice to know just how close we American lemmings are to the edge of the cliff, just how much time we can afford to keep running nose-to-ass, blinders firmly in place, circling the wagons here and there, with bombs bursting in air, while all through the night our enemies amass in greater and greater numbers, picking away at stragglers, mutilating our ‘liberators’, and baiting us with incessant taunting. Sherman had his march across Georgia, Bush has his march across the globe. The scorched earth policy worked for Sherman, will it work for Bush? It hasn’t worked for Israel, but then that is such a small arena compared to the arena Bush has staked out as his eminent domain. Who says Bush is not a big thinker? His personal notions and religious beliefs are going to rule the world. Haven’t we seen this before in World History?
The life and example set by Abraham Lincoln serves, in my mind, to bolster the arguments put forth here. When people refer to Lincoln as a self made man starting with the humblest origins, they usually refer to his acquisition of career and power. But Lincoln was a self made man in more important respects. His religious, moral, and social values he constructed himself, he simply did not choose to inherit the ideas, beliefs, or habits of others. His power of concentration on any subject that interested him was unique and powerful. By any normal standards Lincoln should have been an outcast in every community he grew up in or lived in at a young age. In a society of hunters, Lincoln did not hunt; among fishermen Lincoln did not fish; among many who were cruel to animals. Lincoln was kind. He shot a turkey at eight years of age and vowed he would never shoot another animal again. Surrounded by farmers, Lincoln had no interest in farming; In a community in which men smoked and chewed, Lincoln never used tobacco; in a rough, profane society, Lincoln did not swear; in a social world in which fighting was a regular male activity, Lincoln was a peacemaker; in a hard-drinking society, Lincoln did not drink; in a society seeped with hostility to Indians, Lincoln resisted it; in a southern-flavored setting soft on slavery, Lincoln always opposed it; in a white world with strong racial antipathies, Lincoln was generous to blacks; in an environment indifferent to education, Lincoln cared about education intensely; in a family active in church Lincoln abstained (the only family member not to be baptized). Aside from the fact I always am intrigued by Lincoln, there are two things here of note, one of which relates to the question of legalizing recreational drug use.
Because Lincoln never drank, the temperance/prohibition crowd pestered him to endorse their movement. He would not because he believed every person needed to accept responsibility for their own vices and personal behaviors. Lincoln liked to differentiate between bad choices and immoral behavior. The government was not there to prevent bad choices, and would not succeed on any account. While Lincoln was personally abstentatious, he did not join in the evangelistic and moralistic teetotalism and the use of the law to prohibit alcohol that marked the movement. In fact he explicitly rejected any claim of superiority on the part of nondrinkers and of temperance advocates over those who were then called drunkards. Rejection of others for their poor choices Lincoln found ‘repugnant’, ‘uncharitable’, and ‘feelingless’. Rather, Lincoln cautioned, those like himself who never fell victim to drink “have been spared more from absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have (abused alcohol)”. Lincoln saw the need of those who abused recreational drugs as one for help, not condemnation. He thought it particularly useless to run around wrapped in a cocoon of moral superiority telling those making bad choices they were going to hell. He liked to tell this story: ‘Paddy’, who stole a shovel, was told that he would pay for it at Judgment Day. “By the powers” Paddy responds, “if ye’ll credit me so long, I’ll take another”. Lincoln was accepted by all around him because he did not prejudge the particular choices of others when it came to things like vocations, drug use, religious beliefs etc. He projected no airs of his being better than others. But the second thing that interests me here is that rather than be ostracized while growing up, Lincoln was highly popular among his peers. Apparently he was popular because he made his friends laugh and think. He was also strong as an ox which prevented any sinister peer from physically assaulting him. When he was mobilized into the armed forces to hunt down an Indian tribe, he was elected Captain of his unit. The only Indian his unit ever came across was an Indian whom his men captured and were going to kill. Lincoln was the lone opposition to killing him, challenging anyone to a fight with the weapon of their choice if they wanted to override him. They let the Indian go. Imagine Lincoln standing idly by today while the courts take a 18 yr. old ghetto kid and throw him in jail for 10 yrs. for selling a drug less harmful than alcohol. William Miller, who belonged to a different military unit said this: “His Men idolized him. Lincoln’s Unit was the hardest set of men I ever saw. No man but Lincoln could do anything with them and Lincoln was their idol and there was not a man but what was obedient to every word he spoke and would fight to his death for Lincoln.” This makes me think of Eugene Watson, my high school history teacher who had the same sort of effect on the rougher crowd. This may be an over generalization, but it seemed to me, while I was teaching, that the most moral students tended to be self made, not products of a strict religious family. Students raised in strict religious settings tended (there are exceptions) to be standoffish, snobbish, intolerant, indifferent to the plight of the less fortunate, and sort of shallow---rigid, with indoctrinated braces on their brains. It seems strange that most do not let their parents choose who they marry, their vocation, the music they like, their hobbies etc. and yet most across the globe just accept the religion of their parents. If religion is so important, sometimes important enough to kill, how can this be?
An analysis of Lincoln’s take on morality is relevant to this musing on recreational drug use. Lincoln, of all the Presidents, spent more time analyzing moral issues than probably any other President and, as a consequence, probably represents our most important leader on moral issues. To Lincoln, moral principles stand or fall by logic and reason. Therefore moral principles cannot be inherited via religious dogmas. To claim legitimacy of a moral precept based on inherited religious dogma is akin to the argument of a parent to a child: “It is right (or wrong) because I say it is so”. Accepting a moral principle on the basis of reason and logic, according to Lincoln, does not confer any moral superiority on the believer. This aspect of Lincoln’s nature is what distinguished him from most of the others opposed to slavery. Lincoln’s battle was always to bring moral principles into wider use, not persecute the offenders. “They (the Southern people) are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up”. The real battle, the eternal battle, according to Lincoln, was the battle between the selfishness of man’s nature and man’s intrinsic love of justice. These principles said Lincoln, “are an eternal antagonism”. He also believed only a small percentage of those who come into the world are natural tyrants. In the Lincolnesque concept of ethics and morality each person, in his own way must struggle with his own selfishness and his own sense of justice, lest moral laws become a far off abstraction utterly separated from intrinsic daily life (vis a vis organized religion). Proper leadership then, is really one of creating an environment in which the love of justice dominates over the selfishness of man’s nature. Advancement towards a more moral society is via education and leadership, not personal damnations or legalizing religious dogmas not defendable via reason and logic, or the persecution of offenders not breaking any existing laws which protect the rights of others. The key ingredient of our noble experiment in government, to Lincoln, is the Jeffersonian right of every citizen to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This of course includes the right to use the recreational drug of your choice. It also includes the right to control your own dying process. It also includes the right to practice your own religious beliefs and not be forced, by any laws, to follow the religious beliefs of others. Abe would agree with Barry that ‘moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”, and Lincoln certainly demonstrated that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”. Ok, just had to sneak in a little Lincoln here and add moral behavior is by no means limited to organized religion. Lincoln, Jefferson and George Washington are prime examples.
I stressed the importance of education as a major tool to combat recreational drug abuse. The average person’s understanding of recreational drug abuse is abysmal. The typical mentality goes thusly: Recreational drug use can ruin one’s life, including health, family relationships, job security, and social life. Therefore recreational drug use is bad, people who use these drugs are bad, those who sell them worse, bad things should be illegal, and bad people incarcerated, the longer the better. So it goes, except for the two most popular recreational drugs, nicotine and alcohol. Even though these are the two most toxic recreational drugs, with these two drugs it is up to the individual to show responsible use. There is of course no responsible use of nicotine except nonuse since it is very toxic in many cases and very addictive. The average American thinks the other recreational drugs are more toxic, more addictive, and somehow more dangerous. What they really mean is that the kind of people known to use these drugs and the whole atmosphere surrounding procurement and use are the targets of their anger.
Recreational drug abuse (not use), except for nicotine, is really a symptom of a need for emotional or mental help. Pain is a symptom of physical damage to the body. We don’t jail people in pain, we treat them, try to cure the cause of the pain. Sometimes we can cure the cause and sometimes we can’t. An elevated body temperature is a symptom. We don’t jail people with elevated body temperatures, we try to cure the cause of the elevated body temperature. Recreational drug abuse is a symptom, a symptom of mental distress, and we ought to try to cure the cause of the problem. The problem of drug abuse is invariably the stresses associated with the abuser’s lifestyle, living conditions, social interactions, or a chemical imbalance in their brain. The wonder is not that some people abuse recreational drugs, the wonder is that we all don’t. In the case of alcohol there is sometimes a hereditary component that predisposes abuse and some people should therefore not use alcohol at all. It also needs to be understood that there is such a thing as responsible recreational drug use and that more people manage responsible recreational drug use than manage recreational drug abuse. It is not a moral sin to occasionally get high, of course with responsible limitations. I drink a glass of wine with every evening meal, except when I eat out and then I am too cheap. I know why I do it, because it creates a certain mellowness, maybe puts me in the mood to think up a musing (smile). People often use a recreational drug in some social situations, to elevate their mood or eliminate inhibitions. With some of the main recreational drugs one has to be careful not to create a medical problem. Nicotine, alcohol, and cocaine are in this category. The medical costs of nicotine and alcohol use is staggering. Nicotine use is all physical damage, alcohol can be both physically and mentally damaging, while the other drugs are usually more dangerous in terms of psychological quirks. There is definitely such a thing as the responsible use of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Cocaine and heroin use will always be more associated with ghettoes since these drugs are used to provide relief from being boxed into an unbearable environment (socially, economically, medically).
One needs to remember that many good things can become addictive and damage one’s health, one’s family, one’s job, etc. Eating habits, considering all the associated consequent problems which can lead to death, is the number one killer in this country. Do we pass laws making certain eating habits illegal? Do we jail anyone who sells junk food?
Of course not, this is an individual responsibility. Should those who abuse food be persecuted, despised, or ridiculed? Of course not since the reasons why some abuse food are complicated and varied. Some people couldn’t gain weight if they tried. Gambling can become an addiction, religion can become an addiction, the pursuit of money can become an addiction, shopping can become an addiction, sex can become an addiction. And the list goes on. In some respects too much of anything can become a bad thing. Would anyone like to tabulate the number of people in the world killed or oppressed because of the religious fervor of some? Are we therefore to make religion illegal? I admit, there are times when one looks at what is done in the name of religion, and one is tempted to disown religion, or at least organized religion.
The next thing one needs to realize is that the abuse of recreational drugs is not all that much dependent on the legality. If one has a need for heroin to make life tolerable, one will find it. If one has a need to gamble, one will. If one has a need for certain kinds of sex or just becomes obsessed with having sex, one finds an outlet. Prostitution will always be there. Homosexuality will always be there. Only fools and those with braces on their brains think they can pass laws to stop these things. There is more misery and damage done by those who want to use the law to make everyone else carbon copies of themselves or prey upon the personal shortcomings of others, than is ever done by those who fail to responsibly control their use of recreational drugs. If anyone thinks it is remotely amusing to take the least toxic of all the recreational drugs, the least likely to ruin anyone’s life or health----marijuana----and then give a decade jail sentence to those young ghetto kids who sell it---well there is something real sick about that sense of humor. Every youth in jail for simply selling recreational drugs, with no charges of violence involved, all 450,000, should be freed, given some career training opportunities, and provided with whatever social support they need to recover from the damage society has done to them.
Imagine if you were dirt poor, a single parent, living in a dump with bars on the window, and the police nailed your son for selling drugs on the corner, money he shared with you to provide food to eat, money he badly wanted so he could buy nice clothes, or get a car, or whatever---and he gets a prison sentence of like 10 years and put in a jail on the other side of the state so you can’t even visit more than like once a year. These are kids---these are real parents----where the hell are family values here? Family values for many has a confined conceptual range, applying only to a particular family, socioeconomic, or religious framework. These damn kids might have sold some dope to your own kid---if your own kid is messed up with mental stresses or confused emotional states, and then seeks drugs for relief, or maybe just wants to use recreational drugs as an experiment, then God surely knows the kid who sells him the drugs has got to be punished. And if your kid shoots someone, jail the person who sold him the gun, not your kid. Of course your kid is basically a good kid. If your kid has a little tete a tete with a prostitute, jail the prostitute, your kid would never do that sort of thing without being enticed into it. If your kid steals a car parked outside a store while the person runs in to buy a paper, it is the guy who is dumb enough to leave his car running while he dashed into the store---it was entrapment. We all tend to be blinded----protect our own congenerous genetic and social associates, jail others. I understand this is human nature, but legitimate government and unbiased ethics protects all citizens, does not allow the persecution of some to protect the imperfections of others.
The injustice achieved by jailing youthful rural/urban recreational drug peddlers for decade sentences is a question of no small magnitude. Of the 2 million (2,019,234) individuals in jail in this country, 450,000 are there on non violent drug related offenses. This ‘Christian’ nation has the highest percentage of our citizens behind bars than any other country in the world, having recently overtaken Russia for the leadership here. There is no way any reasonable person can read the teachings of Christ and conclude any Christian community, remotely committed to the teachings of Christ, could ever be the leader in jailing their brethren. Our current jail population represents 22% of all the people in jail in the whole world. How did this become the American way? Perhaps we became ethically or religiously lethargic, it is easier to jail then to be there for those in need. Everything about this industry of incarceration reeks with injustice. In 1980 there were 40,000 drug offenders locked up. The law and order fanatics subsequently gained the upper hand, except for any reduction in the use of these illegal recreational drugs. This being the case, no reduction in recreational drug use, it is not possible, from any logical standpoint, to defend our current policies except to insist jailing 450,000 young poor kids is a moral good. And it gets worse. The percentage of people using these illegal recreational drugs is about the same for the black, Latino, and white population in this country. The black and latino population comprises roughly 20% of our population. Do they represent 20% of those in jail for recreational drug offenses? Hardly. 75% of those in jail for recreational drug offenses are black or Latino. This can be sliced and analyzed anyway one wants but what is left, when the dust settles, is a blatant mean spirited assault on the young poor and especially young poor blacks and latinos. Whether admitted or not, the only effect of our War on Drugs is to lock up as many of the poor kids, especially the minority ones, as we possibly can----get them out of sight and out of mind. The cost for this sadistic pleasure is somewhere between $25,000-$40,000 per prisoner per year.
On numbers alone, the 450,000 jailed recreational drug offenders is one eighth the number of slaves in this country 150 years ago, and easily matches the consequences to the victims. Southerners, of course, never referred to their slaves as victims. Those who support our recreational drug laws do not see these jailed youths as victims either. A lot of people in the ghetto do not see them as victims. People, after all, die from these gang rivalries. Like slavery, the current policies relating to recreational drug use and sale have generated a massive industry---to the tune of billions every year. To legalize recreational drug use, to relegate recreational drug use to individual responsibility, to concentrate our policies on education and treatment---is not, on the surface, such an outrageous alternative. Few can argue current policies have worked, reduced recreational drug use, or done much to provide most recreational drug abusers any relief. To redirect our efforts, to take this new approach, is not even risky. It could be stopped any time, revoked if necessary. “I’d support it (legalization of recreational drugs) just to see what would happen” (Barry Goldwater). Why then, it must be asked, is the current system so untouchable?
Like slavery, it has the same kind of economic and philosophical roots. The War on Drugs is a massive industry. If the war on Drugs, as fought today in this country, were stopped the economic ramifications would send this country, already economically fragile, into economic depression. On paper, to give these 450,000 ‘kids’ back their lives, among the costs, in no particular order would be:
1. Politicians would lose one of their most effective tools to get elected (tough on crime).
2. Parents and kids would have to assume personal responsibility for their use of recreational drugs. The fear is pervasive that if legal, kids and many of us would race out to become recreational drug abusers. There is no evidence of this in the history of the world and recreational drugs of various sorts, varying according to location and culture, have been around for many centuries.
3. Police would lose their easiest ticket to promotion---collaring ghetto kids (and prostitutes).
4 The number of police needed would be markedly reduced
5. The number of Correctional Officers needed would be markedly reduced
6. The number of parole officers needed would be markedly reduced
7. Court loads and the number of people needed to handle court loads would be markedly reduced.
8. Fewer kids in rural and urban ghettos would drop out of school and school costs would go up.
9. There would be a temporary increase in property thefts
10. The number of lawyers needed would be markedly reduced.
11. If the prison population were to fall by 450,000 @$30,000/yr. per inmate to house and feed them---then the number of supporting employees to provide such goods and services would drop markedly. That alone is a $13 billion dollar hit on our economy. The economic hit is higher here though than losing 450,000 inmates to feed and house---substantially higher. For example, in Chicago alone, 40% of homicides are attributed to hostilities between drug dealing gangs. Still, the supporters of this War on Drugs refuse to see it. The murder rate in this country rose with the start of Alcohol prohibition, remained high during alcohol prohibition, then declined for 11 consecutive years after alcohol prohibition ended. One suspects this is of little matter to the religious right since the current victims are seen as evil disposable diabolical ogres
Clearly, the economic burden for letting go of this war would be massive.
And the cost would not just be economic. The anger of the religious right would rise to a record crescendo. The immorality of recreational drug use (selectively) is one of those moral sins created by the religious right with no such biblical mandate. I don’t think it too unfair to state that almost all of the current emotional energies of the religious right are on matters with little or no biblical foundation and certainly were not any major theme of the religious founders. Of course it is not just the religious right---most Americans have philosophical reasons for opposing legalization of recreational drugs. I separate the two populations because most Americans are susceptible to logic and reason on moral issues. Genuine goodness is the same, whether found inside or outside organized religion. Perhaps at some point the non faith based portion of the public can be galvanized to understand one of the worst sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit. Ghetto kids don’t need to be our designated illegal suppliers for our use of recreational drugs. What ghetto kids need, during their formative years, is a sense of security and the ability to dream about wishes for a future that is hopeful---and attainable. Ironically, the affluent will never be secure themselves while life is insecure for millions of the poor. It is better to be branded a heretic, helping children of God out of ghetto gutters where the Churches and us have thrown them, then to live isolated from them, muttering under our breath, ‘the wages of sin is death’ (or sesquipedalian terms of incarceration). The religious right insist their faith based religious views are for the salvation of others---you can usually identify the others by their hunted expression. Moral issues for the religious right are faith based, any right or wrong once accepted as part of their faith becomes etched in stone. A religious ‘righter’ does not see him/her self as being mean to anyone on issues like recreational drug use, abortion, homosexuality, control over dying, religious prayers in schools, dress codes, sexual behaviors, marriage rights, suicide, unrestrictive accumulation of wealth, inheritance protection laws/shelters, underfunding education for the poor, opposition to universal health care, etc. The charge made here has nothing to do with moral superiority. The people of the north, during slavery, were not, in the broadest sense, a morally superior lot than the people of the south. Still, slavery was morally wrong. The object is to right moral wrongs in order to further justice in society. Holding as the religious right does, that the use of selected recreational drugs is morally wrong, and socially regressive, they cannot, as an act of faith, cease to demand full national recognition of their faith as a legal fact and social blessing. In their faith based prejudices they are as confident as Cleopatra’s pussy. Each difficult battle to bring justice to more and more in our short American history has never been led by the religious right. Isn’t it strange that some of those most determined to live a moral life have found themselves, throughout American history, relegated to playing, at best, a reluctant role in the battles to bring more justice and fairness to those so denied it in this land of the free? They are not so much immoral as just boxed in. Beliefs based primarily on faith, not reason and logic, cannot be altered without questioning all the other beliefs based on faith. Faith based religion, in it’s purest form, is an all or nothing endeavor rooted in inherited dogmas. To bring justice and salvation to these 450,000 young people in our jails is no small task. It will take a Lincolnesque type leader, using the powers of logic, reason, and sense of justice, to stop this War on Drugs. The religious right will never change, that is a given. It is difficult to achieve a dialectic buzz session, let alone achieve logical resolution on any moral issue with those who use inherited religious dogma couched in a tone of preemptory moral certitude. They seek moral goals but are trapped. Led mostly by living clerical fossils, who mutter away to themselves in isolated chapels, ignored often even by their own parishioners--- the inability to change is the albatross faith based religionists carry around their neck. Faith based virtue with the consequent intolerance of, and anger towards others, then becomes its own punishment. Radical religionists are not exactly known as ‘happy campers’.
How to stop this war and avoid the economic consequences is the key trick. There has to be a transition period, you can’t, for economic reasons, just close down a multi billion dollar industry with roots all over our economic tree. If education and treatment centers were to become the revised War on, not recreational drug use, but recreational drug abuse, then you don’t lay off police, correctional officers, parole officers, court system employees, and the millions who work presently to supply food and housing for prisoners. You don’t lay off these people, you transfer them and incorporate new workers too. We stop building prisons, we build treatment centers, we convert prisons, no longer being used, to treatment centers or educational schools, we staff treatment centers, not prisons. If we need less police, we will need more teachers---kids won’t drop out to make a living selling recreational drugs anymore. Take the billions of dollars spent to feed prisoners and use the money to seed businesses to return to ghettoes. The ghettos will still be poor, like ghettos were always poor, but with the gang drug turf violence gone, ghettos will be like before this massive War on Drugs---a lot less ridden with crime. With jobs available requiring a high school diploma, more kids will stay in school. To hell with Iraq, let us bring the reality of the American dream back into the lives of the 450,000 poor kids we jail for trying to improve their economic status. Let us uplift our own poor youth, not stand astride the necks of the least amongst us, those most in need of someone to be there for them. Let us engage, as we so ought, the eternal battle described by Lincoln: “the battle between the selfishness of man’s nature and man’s intrinsic love of justice”. In this case it is the selfishness of trying to protect ourselves and our kids from personal responsibility to control recreational drug use, versus the injustice of jailing ghetto kids for the poor choices of others. We have all kinds of choices to make with recreational drug use and many make poor choices and will continue to do so regardless of any legal restraints.
Not too long ago I saw this movie called ‘Midnight Express’. The claim is the movie is a true story. It won some kind of Oscar for something or other. It was not the intent of the movie, nor perceived by viewers, as a reflection of just how irrational and unjust we are about recreational drug use in this country. In this movie a young American preppy couple were vacationing in Turkey. The young man decides to smuggle in some pot to take home and share with his friends. He gets nailed at the airport in Turkey on his way home. He is treated very meanly and roughly by the Turkish police and courts, given 4 yrs. in jail, then after review, he is given a life sentence. We see the anguish the boy’s mother, father, and girlfriend go through, we see the hopelessness of his life in a Turkish jail where he is both physically and mentally abused until his sense of reality is pathetically distorted. After many years he either knocks out or kills the warden, dresses in his uniform, and escapes from prison, makes his way to Greece, and then home to America where he is welcomed as a hero. The point, of course is that the Turks are cruel, unsympathetic, intolerant brutes who revel in torturing young kids for minor indiscretions. Most of the countries where these recreational drug crops are grown, and have been grown for centuries, see it differently. We keep demanding that they get tough on the growers and the sellers of these drugs to Americans and they keep demanding that our government should stop the demand for these drugs if we don’t want our people to use them. In these countries there is no higher percentage of drug abusers than there are alcoholic or nicotine addicts in this country. Nixon was President at the time and he demanded forcefully that Turkey (and others) demonstrate they were serious about drug smuggling to our country or else their financial aid would be reduced. So of course they catch a smuggler, this American kid, and they give him a life sentence, I suppose rhetorically asking us, “is that tough enough for you?”. Aside from all of this, I too felt anger and sympathy over what this poor kid went through. But of course I also wonder why we cannot show the same anger and sympathy for our ghetto kids that we do the same thing to? At least this affluent kid had a lot of family, money, dignitaries, and lawyers fighting to get him released. Young Cornrow Kinkhead from Watts, arrested for the same crime, instead of tears (except maybe from his mom and siblings) there is only the regret the police had not shot him to death or had given him life instead of 10-12 years.
Radical off the wall me, the Morningside Olympic Champ, the TV film star, the ‘swinger’, the guy who sits these days in a King Tut throne chair, suggests every sizable community have a Community Help Center, open to all citizens, located right in ghettos, where any citizen can go when they feel overwhelmed by the stresses of their life, for help. Inside this Help Center would be the appropriate govt. agencies, volunteer organizations, and all organized religious groups. Let these varied groups compete to justify their existence. This Center would also register every child at birth and see to it that every child will have some quality extended family. Distance or personal situations/limitations of biological relatives may require adding uncles, aunts, grandmas and grandpas for many kids. Personally I think it would be great if the extended family of a kid included varied races, religions, etc. We all, even the busiest among us, can find time to maintain meaningful relationships with those in need. “What is faith”, Gandhi said, “If it is not translated into action.” Close down military bases across the globe, use the money to help all countries across the globe establish similar Help Centers, and reinstitute the draft for everyone---this time 2 yrs. after high school and two years after retirement for community service at these Help Centers. Each time a citizen is personally assigned to act to improve the lot of the less fortunate, or empowered to strike out against injustice he/she then, as directed by all the religious founders, is sending out a tiny ripple of hope, and these ripples, crossing each other from a million different centers of individual caring, build a current strong enough to sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice. With these Help Centers in place and most all of our citizens engaged, early and late in their lives, maybe then, and only then should we have the right to call ourselves a Christian nation or the Land of Lincoln, or use that word compassionate as part of any political slogan. Fuck teaching kids how to kill, how to use violence to resolve disputes, how to get themselves killed over misplaced patriotic fervor, or how to stand around in foreign countries until someone blows up their ass. Peace need not be impractical and war need not be inevitable. Contacts among nations, religions, economic classes, or political groups need not be transformed into an exchange of death threats. Help people help the environment, help save plant and animal species, practice responsible reproductive limitations, and in essence become genuine religious disciples, practicing religion as Jesus and Buddha, and the other founders of religion practiced it, and instructed their followers to practice it. Using logic based ethics the environment comes first, people second, and unrestrained profits last. The cultivation and expansion of this mania to need more and more THINGS is the antithesis of wisdom. Only a reduction of materialistic needs can promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war. Only responsible reproduction can save the future. If we don’t change directions we will end up where we are going. With these Help Centers ethics becomes a global circle around our now global economy, a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
If a certain amount of violence is required to give meaning or zest to our life, then we can take the largest ornate cathedrals, turn them into arenas open to the public, free of charge, to watch our current illustrious world leaders like Kaddafi, Bush, Hussein, Bin Laden, Pat Robertson, Cheney, Rumsfeld, certain Cardinals, certain Moslem clerics, Jerry Faulwell, and others of similar ilk--- be released from their pens and let them snarl and attack each other, a fight to the death, all in the name of their various perceived causes. Bush of course would get to wear a bomber jacket and carry bombs stored in his every orifice and other weapons of mass destruction gripped by his every appendage. May the most arrogant, intolerant, militaristic and pigheaded of the lot be the last standing. Then may the good Lord carry the victor and beaten opponents off to meet with the ghosts of all those who died or suffered at the hands of their policies and beliefs. I myself won’t be at the cathedral. All in all, given the choice, I would rather tip toe through the tulips with Tiny Tim. At least there would be no victims. I am tired of victims, of disposable ghetto kids, disposable species, disposable soldiers, and being led down the path of militaristic self serving greed glutted theocratic corpocracy.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
DATE:12/2000 Things That Amaze Me
THINGS THAT AMAZE ME
A Seasonal 2000/2001 Musing
R. S. James
1.. Skeletons of dinosaurs that lived 200 million yrs. ago. Both the size and age amaze
me. Or a mummy that was alive 4000 yrs ago. Wow! I hope no nosey bastards are looking at me 4000 yrs from now commenting……“notice the primitive brain”…
2.. People that give up a comfortable and safe life to help others in some unsafe,
unhealthy, decrepit environment. They are better than I.
3.. Sex. The diversity of human sexual inclinations, drives, and practices amazes me.
What is it all about anyway?
4. The insignificance of self. On an expressway or at an airport I just gaze at the mass of
humanity, all scurrying hither and thither, each one trying so hard to believe their life is important, each believing in different ways to the same or different God, that they matter. It just makes one wonder.
5. The fact that Jesus and Confucius and Buddha and Muhammad and perhaps other
religion founders never wrote anything. All their teachings and laws were written by others after they were gone. It just seems strange.
6. The inability of our society to understand the quickly approaching consequences of
overpopulation stress on the environment. It can’t be stupidity, just some sort of inherent necessity for denial.
7. That a complicated finely tuned human body can live so long. I mean, there are so
many possibilities for malfunction resulting in death, and yet most of us live a long time.
8. While most all of us strive so hard for money and fame, most of those who achieve it,
rarely, judging by their biographies and autobiographies, ever achieve much
satisfaction. They seem unusually tormented. This seems so strange. Perhaps our goals are misdirected.
9. The vast number of people in the world who live in misery with nothing---no money,
no property, no job, no security. How can they stand it?
10. The unfairness of life. Like my birth gave me my religion, my economic
environment, my looks, my town, state, country of origin, my peers, etc. What saved me from being born in Kosovo or in Palestinian territory, etc? The smartest thing I ever did was choose my parents carefully. Sure. A lot of what we are proud of is just good fortune.
11. People who survive tornadoes when their house is smashed to smithereens. Almost
all survive when it seems almost all should be dead.
12. Looking at a tree that is 2000 years old and still alive. Or that the early pioneers
actually cut such trees down just to watch them fall.
13. Treating drug abuse as a criminal, not a medical problem and then launching a ‘war
on drugs’ which creates an illicit drug trade which suckers the poorest of the young into selling drugs, then throwing them in jail, leaving their kids fatherless, turning their communities into violent war zones, overcrowding our jails, and leaving us with the world record for the highest percentage of citizens in jail. It is simply madness and has accomplished absolutely nothing.
14. People who torture other humans or animals. I can’t relate to the motivation behind
this at all. A person must have an awful lot of pent-up anger to do these things.
15. Computers and computer chips. I have difficulty visualizing how a car works---but
computers? Oh my!
16. Humor. I’m glad I laugh at so many things, many of which others may not, but how
come only humans laugh and why do we laugh? Keisha never laughs. Neither did
my mother at some really funny shit.
17. The earth. They say the earth has existed 4.6 billion years. Where was it before
that? Didn’t something at some point have to come from nothing? This is the question that drives home to me how helplessly limited my mind is.
18. Sleep. What is it anyway? I like it, but what does it do? And why is it now that I
can get as much as I want, I seem to need less? Is this some kind of joke?
19. Birds migrating thousands of miles and returning to the same area next year. Not
only is it brilliant mental activity of some sort, but how does a little bitty bird manage it physically, sometimes over oceans? Don’t they get hungry?
20. How the pioneers made it through the winter.
21. How the pioneers could live with 10-12 people in a little 1 or 2 room cabin. The lack
of privacy would drive me insane. And really, I need, just for me, 13 rooms for all my ‘stuff’. Nobody had much ‘stuff’ back then I guess. I wonder whether pursuing all this ‘stuff’ has anything to do with the fact that there are 5X more homicides/100,000 population today than in 1900? I, of course got good ‘stuff’. Some of your ‘stuff’ is witless.
22. Abraham Lincoln. Everything about his life, his intellect, his personality, and his
physical uniqueness is so intriguing and mysterious from so many aspects. Few that ever examine his life very closely do not get pulled into the Lincoln ‘cult’.
23. Love. Most movies have love as a major theme, and it seems so neat, but looking at
most couples it seems different, a little less neat. A lot of couples seem less like love birds, and more like trapped antagonists in a tenuous truce, each treading warily about the other, like any minute a skirmish could lead to open warfare.
24. Death. If there is no afterlife what could possibly be the reason for living? I don’t
fear death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
25. Salvation. Something strange and incomprehensible here. Like the playing field is
not level. We pretty much inherit our religion and the deeply religious are often the most intolerant and rigid souls on the face of the earth. It doesn’t make sense.
26. Gun nuts. Like how can they get so ballistic over any suggestion that, in these times,
maybe gun ownership should be an earned privilege, not a sacred right. Guns mean so much to them, yet any true tales of how a gun saved anyone’s life is a rarity. If I decide to nail their ass I doubt I will do it while they have a cocked gun aimed at me; more likely through the window as they doze in a chair. On the other hand, I feel safer with my 2 guns in the house. Amazing two-faced antagonist here.
27. Presidential races or being President. Where do these guys find the time and stamina to deal with all these issues and all these people? I think to relieve tension and retain my sanity I would need more than one ‘Monica’ kneeling in the wings. Tom Dewey, having been told he won the Presidency over Truman, commented to his wife: “How will you feel having sex with the President of the Country?” The next morning, when it was clear Dewey had lost, his wife asked: “Is Harry coming here or am I going to the White House?”
28. Crediting any President since Eisenhower with a quality quotation. Since Presidents
or Presidential contenders no longer write their own speeches why the hell do we credit them with the quotation? Shouldn’t it go to the speech writer who put the statement in the speech? “Ask not what your country can do for you”……. Now some of these mental midgets go down in history as having said some pretty admirable things, when the truth is they just read what somebody else had written.
29. People who go on shows like the Jerry Springer Show and make an ass out of
themselves. I guess some people will settle for attention of any kind. If I make an ass out of myself I do it in a musing to a restricted number of people.
30. The number of times we can laugh at sex jokes. Like perhaps after laughing at sex
thousands of times we should no longer find the subject funny. There must be a circuit built in our brain that says whenever the conversation is about sex, laugh. I think if you just blurted out in a group the word “sex”, everyone would just automatically laugh. Try and say something serious about sex in a group conversation---I think it would be nigh impossible: “My wife was very tired last night so I just masturbated”. Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. “My husband has a urinary tract infection and so it is painful for him to have an erection” HA., Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. Sex is a comedian’s best friend.
31. The fact that the most vulnerable citizens, in need of the most attention, rarely vote.
So the distance between the wealthiest and poorest in society just grows and grows and grows.
32. That anyone would bungee jump.
33. How Minnie Pearl could say “How-dee” a thousand times and each time get a laugh. If I say “Good-dee-biii” and wear a funny hat can I make a career out of it? Maybe I am on to something, is Hee-Haw still on television?
34. That people spend big bucks and an entire day to attend a football game in frigid
miserable weather seeing less, getting no analysis or play by play or rerun of plays as they would if they stayed home and watched on TV.
35. Addiction to anything. What makes us so compulsive about certain things, like
running till we drop, or eating till we become a whale, or drinking till we become an alcoholic, or working till we have a nervous breakdown, or fucking around till we die of AIDS? Is there something wrong with us?
36. If Jesus never sought an elaborate building to preach in, or had his audiences sing
hymns, or play bingo, or form social clubs (youth groups, women’s groups, prayer groups, etc), or collected money, why do we? Maybe we are smarter.
37. That people are so different from each other, not just in looks, but in practically
every other way too. What is the matter with the rest of you?
38. The physical or mental abilities some people have. It makes me feel so limited.
Some people can talk about a subject in such a way that I have no idea what they are talking about, and it won’t do any good for them to repeat it either.
39. How well behaved all my cats have been and I’ve had cats since the 60’s. All the
things broken or damaged in the house have always been by me. The cats have never damaged anything except for one broken glass and one roll of toilet paper. Is this some sort of record?
40. That something so funny to me can be so unfunny to others. What is wrong with
some of you?
41. That a movie I thought was so funny when young can be so unfunny at an older age.
They say a person never really changes, but we do, I for the better, you for the worst, and Rick just stays below scale.
42. How marriage can either be the greatest thing in the world or the worst thing to ever happen to a person. It seems like the happiest in the world are the happily married,the most unhappy are those in a bad marriage or after a bitter divorce, and the most peculiar are the single, myself the exception.
43. The human brain. Ask any physiologist to explain an original thought and it will be
a short discourse.
44. That logic so often betrays reality. Who put all this together anyway? Is there
something wrong with God? Did He die? Did Bullet eat Him? Maybe God looked at what He created, saw it was a blunder and walked away. I have been looking for Him, but there are so many places He could hide. Maybe if we sacrificed Rick, God would come back. Better yet, all of Texas. But I think God likes me, the rest of you kind of irritate Him so knock it off.
45. That human males are not totally exhausted. While a typical human female produces around 400 fertile eggs in her lifetime, a human male produces billions of sperm. Even when a male looks like he is just sitting doing nothing he is really churning out thousands and thousands of sperm. This is hard work, not to mention the effort required to set sperm free. Bill tries not to produce sperm during a church service, but his restless squirming indicates otherwise. Women stop producing eggs around 45 years of age, but males, the more stubborn and optimistic sex, just slow down, but never stop. I always reprimand elderly men on the street: “Just stop it you dirty old man, stop it.” Rick even does it in public, even on the job, even at the kitchen table while his mother is eating. When Rick was younger his mother used to yell: “Don’t stand there generating sperm with a smirk on your face while I am talking to you!”
46. That issues, which determine whether the next generation will have a good life, are rarely discussed by citizens or their politicians, while the private sexual capers and peculiarities of politicians, which have zero bearing on the affairs of the nation, the world or the future, become the subject of tiresome commentary and investigations.
47. That most of the vociferous pontificators about private sexual behaviors are riddled with past or present sexual peculiarities/indiscretions/hangups of their own,
or are themselves least comfortable with, or fulfilled by, their own sexual self. So there we have it, we laugh about sex all the time and then use it to hit others over the head, never of course, showing any interest in any public discussion of our own sexual life, as boring or as weird as it might be or not be. Perhaps we need a law whereby anyone who wishes to talk publicly about another’s sex life ought to be required to provide full and equally detailed public disclosure about their own sex life. That would at least give us more laughs.
Seasonal best wishes and may God, in his infinite kindness, give you the patience to
understand me, and the good fortune to have the best of New Years for both you and those you love. But only if I am included. Otherwise I hope God strikes you dead and a pack of stray dogs drag your body through downtown Chicago. Oh, just joking.
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