Life of Meaning

Life of Meaning:

It often takes a lifetime to connect some dots. Recently I watched an interview on TV with a young man in his 20's. His past is interesting. He was like a 10 yr old boy living in, I think, Somalia when a band of genocidists invaded his little village and killed his whole family. Sadly, nothing unusual so far, just an increasingly common occurrence across a troubled globe. For differing reasons the global human family groups are developing less voluntary respect and tolerance, each for the other, the varying forms of hate increasingly seeped in perversity. In order to get food to eat this Somalian boy had to join up with those who killed his whole family. Ok, survival is survival. But surprisingly, he not only joined them but he developed into an accomplished torturer and murderer in his own right. The people he tortured and killed as a member of an army of mostly kids, were those of his own ethnic or tribal origin. He didn't just kill, he delighted in killing as slowly and painfully as possible. At some point he was 'rescued' but the UN group that rescued him found him anything but glad to be rescued. He credits a few patient and determined persons for enabling him to recover lost feelings for others. Today he seems a remarkably candid, bright, young man with a gift of verbal communication.

I remember, years ago, being astounded to find Patty Hearst had become an active and supportive member of the organization which kidnapped her. I guess the term we all use rather innocently enough for these cases is brainwashing. Yet few of us can clearly define the term brainwashing. I suppose, if you stretch the point enough, then religion, politics, culture, diet, sports, and even love become some sort of brainwashing processes.

War itself has always struck me, as a bystander, as kind of a peculiar venture. Everyone involved in a war seems deeply affected by it. All say it is hell, and to some, things they experienced were so deeply embedded in their soul that they refuse to ever talk about their experiences. Others, also saying war is hell, never miss an opportunity to talk about it and carry the experience around with a badge of honor, the most meaningful experience of their whole life. Those who have been in a previous war seem, in general, to support any new war. This puzzles me. If war is Hell then why so eager for another one? No group is more supportive of military adventurism than Veterans Organizations.

You see inner city kids eagerly participating in gang activities which they know will either get them killed or put in jail, and yet even those who try to save them are in for the rude awakening that most of these young thugs don't want to be saved. Even with prostitutes, we can talk all we want, and accurately, about how they are being used and abused, but a high percentage show no interest in being saved or rescued and if you try to stop them from their trade they are furious.

Then there are accomplished politicians and CEO's who have achieved all the power and money they could possibly need and yet engage in all sorts of corrupt and devious methods to try and get more power or money or both.

Perhaps the underlying phenomenon here is the need for all of us to have some sort of meaning to our lives. I think the greatest fear for most people is to be irrelevant, to have no real meaning to their lives, to be left isolated with no reason for existing. That becomes unbearable. A kid in the ghetto or a rich kid can both find, for differing reasons, a kind of cocoon of meaninglessness to their lives. Of course this cocoon can sometimes surround most anyone of any kind of status in life. I think zealots for any cause, including religious zealots of the right, become zealots because whatever they are zealots about is the driving force for giving a meaning to their existence. This explains all of the examples early in this musing. What gives meaning to your life may not be right, may not be good for you in the long run, may be hurtful or damaging to others, may be detrimental to society as a whole, or a portion of society, and yet that which gives meaning to your own life, is difficult to let go. The Somalian kid with no family at least in a child's army he had 'family' and it was his only source of meaning to his life; Patty Hearst went from being, for all practical purposes, a rich nobody to being a rebel somebody; particular soldiers may find themselves at last being somebody involved in something important and whether the war is just or not becomes irrelevant. These soldiers are not only now somebody but in many cases are able to get a decent salary which they otherwise would not likely be able to find elsewhere. Unless there is a draft to get soldiers, most soldiers are not going to be against any war in which they end up involved. One of the greatest difficulties of ending the Iraq War compared to the Vietnam War is the absence of any draft. No draft, no riots in the streets. No increased taxation, no real citizen protest to end the war. No sacrifice for most citizens and no real anger about such a war. Add to this an opposing army of volunteer terrorists from the ever increasing pool of educated have-nots and this madness is rapidly approaching a point of no return. 'Educated' you say? Yes, educated in the sense that modern media accessibility worldwide enables the dumbest have-nots to realize how little they really have compared to what their enemies have. It is quite difficult anywhere on the globe these days for any have-nots to suffer any illusions of their being other than a have-not. Added to all this is the circumstance where in many places across the globe it is no longer possible to live off the land---there are too many people for this to be possible.

In the end violence is violence. Killing is killing. If a person is killed by someone pressing a button far out of their sight, or a person is killed by a suicide bomber, the killing is still a killing and a planned killing. It really is a stretch to formulate a notion that it is not right to kill if you blow yourself up in the process but it is ok to kill if you have the equipment to kill without involving yourself in any personal way. When we say life means nothing to these suicide bombers maybe it is more accurate to say there is so little meaningful existence to their lives, so little hope for any meaningfulness in their own lives, that killing those they hold responsible for their own meaninglessness, is the only avenue to their life which will give it any meaning. The Korean who killed those college students, himself wrapped in a life of meaninglessness, whatever the reason for his predicament, saw meaning only in his killing spree. He was not going to die an unknown nobody. He wanted to be somebody. A life of meaning then becomes achieved only by killing. If you can't build yourself up, then at least you can bring someone else down. KILLING BECOMES THE LIFE OF MEANING.

To the extent any of the above has merit, then how do we stop the rapidly expanding use of violence to bring meaning to people's lives? I suspect it all starts with overpopulation and the consequent squeeze on natural resources. The human race is biologically out of control, like locusts voraciously devouring planetary resources as if such resources were unlimited. Most may understand this in some sort of vague way, but it is buried in a protective wall of self denial. In political debates absolutely no major political candidate brings up the issue of reproductive responsibility. Not even a weak murmur. It is like we have boxed ourselves into the insane paradox where abortion rages as an issue while the connection between overpopulation and the resulting violence, homelessness, poverty, and disease leading to the death of millions per day is outside our blinders and protected by the braces on our brains. In some sort of weird religious like trance, like a deer blinded in the headlights of an oncoming car, we cling to the belief that somehow, if we are one of the haves, that things will work out for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds. In some sense of course, this is true. Life will go on, it always has, in one form or another---nature always bats last. It seems clear now that reproductive responsibility, given the nature of human behavior, is not going to be achieved by any rational planning. In the absence of any rational planning to control reproductive behavior, the violence across the globe will increase unabatedly, and exponentially, and expand to all parts of the globe. No location will be spared since the nature of the violence is such that it precludes reproductive responsibility as a solution. Rational long term planning cannot be achieved once the violence rises above a certain level.

The only debatable question, in the total absence of any debate on this issue of global reproductive responsibility, is how long before we reach the point of no return. It is scary, but perhaps we already have. Iraq, most of the Middle East, Africa, parts of Asia, and South America could well be a microcosm of the future. Of these, Iraq is probably past the point of no return. If the insane violence there is really the product of people with no chance of a meaningful individual existence outside of the violence perpetuated on perceived enemies, then the solution is beyond my comprehension. Rebuild Iraq? We can't even rebuild New Orleans and these were our own people. In 50 years no nation or group of nations has ever found a way to give the Palestinian people anything but squalid refugee camps. Why the hell, one could ask, should any one be required to give anyone anything, let them create a prosperity of their own. Sounds reasonable of course except they live on land with negligible resources and massive overpopulation. Thugs always rule under such circumstances, much as they rule in our own urban ghetto Drug War zones, although the 'thugness' is magnified in the Palestinian lands.

The internet and other kinds of immediate forms of global communication give the have-nots across the globe a means to effectively coordinate terroristic ideas, plans, and a means to acquire weapons or build them. The current nature of the War on Terrorism has no more chance of stopping terrorism than the 50 year War on Drugs in this country has stopped marijuana access and use. If ever the phrase violence begets violence has truth, these are two examples of it. With each surge by either side in the violence, the response rises tit for tat. No group in the history of the world has ever been exempt from this current kind of cruel and senseless violence under certain conditions. Underneath our thin veneer of civilized behavior apparently rests a subconscious rage of anger and cruelty. I often ask myself, "Could I really do these things to other people, could I really get that angry and express such cruel rage?" Subjectively I say no, objectively I can find no reason to exempt myself. I am going to be very human here and just stop thinking about such a thing.

None of the violence and killing is happening in my little world, under my nose, in my face---I can't personally stop it anyway---I am retired---I already know I don't like those killing 'us' and anyway, why do so many across the globe object to our being in their face, to our military bases all over their countries, to our use of their virtual slave labor to produce goods for us at bargain prices, to our controlling and gobbling up their own natural resources, to our unilaterally deciding who is good and bad, what form of govt is best for all, period---and then, despite all our helpfulness, why do increasingly more of 'them' want to kill us? At some point our kindness will end, they better be careful or they will lose everything they have. Trouble is, freedom for them is just another word for nothing left to lose. We have kindly, for their own good, militarily invaded well over 50 countries in the last century EXCLUDING WW1 amd WW2. Can't they see how much better off they were after we invaded them? Let me see there has been Haiti, Lebanon, Vietnam, Korea, Honduras, Ecuador, Cuba, Panama---oh the hell with dwelling on all this. Certainly South Korea, Croatia, Bosnia, and my favorite--Granada---are better off. But then again, a handful out of over 50 is not a good batting average. Why on earth do so many of Lincoln's 'common people' across the globe think Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rowe, Condescending Rice, Pat Roberston, Rush Limbaugh etc. are not really smothering them with loving fatherly 'tough love"? If we don't kill off all these millions of really angry hapless unblest wretches our national security is at stake.

It would be hard to argue killing them all would not do the trick. But that really is a large number of people to murder considering polls show more people in the world admire Bin Laden than George Bush. Somehow we have been sold a bill of goods that if we can kill a good number, the rest will desist. I, for one, am a bit skeptical. We have killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq, including I don't know how many 'top' lieutenants of Bin Laden, and yet so far violence has only begotten violence. Maybe if we can kill MILLIONS of these 'terrorists', things will calm down, just like when we jailed hundreds of thousands of our urban, suburban, and rural ghetto kids we got rid of dope peddlers and have a marijuana free society. Yeah, sure. I agree though that Killing CAN work. We reduced the American Indian population by well over 90% and put the remainder on reservations, and populated their lands with our own population. I agree, that worked quite well. If we did the same thing in Iraq, we could put our poor over there and let them get rich selling us oil. Sure sounds like win-win plan to me. But then, that still leaves an astounding number of hapless unblest wretches spread over the rest of the earth's continents. With modern methods of communication all these isolated unblest wretches are becoming one massive interconnected swarm of really angry hornets searching for us wherever we might be. No matter to me, I live on the 11th floor and on a clear day, as far my eyes can see, none of these wretched terrorists can been seen in the distant horizon heading for my place. Seeing is believing. I am safe. All praise to wise King George.

On a recent Public Television debate a Bush supporter put the need to continue the War in Iraq this way: if we let the 'terrorists' chase us out of Iraq then this emboldens the 'terrorists' who want us out of Afghanistan, or out of Turkey, or out of Saudi Arabia, out of certain Asian, South American, or African countries etc. I don't think I would argue with this logic. But I would question why are we the only country in the world who feels such a determined need to get so involved in the internal politics of other countries? Why are we essentially the only country demanding the right to put military bases across the globe, to prop up this foreign government or another, to virtually own the natural resources of other sovereign nations, etc? What has it gained us except an increasingly hostile and growing number of foreign grown terrorists who are finding ways to attack us in ways we are helpless to stop? None of these terrorist groups are trying to capture the United States. They want us to stop meddling in the politics of their own country. Frankly, I think we should stop. You know, be like some super sized Switzerland. It is not right to meddle so much in the politics of other countries, to treat them subtly as some form of colonies, to be arming certain political factions, etc. This does not mean we need to be wimps either, or leave ourselves vulnerable to economic blackmail. I would back off this meddling role which is leaving all of us vulnerable to terroristic attacks, and simply make it clear that they will be treated in the future as 'real' sovereign countries so long as they trade with us at international market prices. In other words I really don't care who runs or controls Iraq as long as whoever does sells us the oil at international market prices. This is a little risk policy. After all, what every one in the world unanimously wants is our money. Al Queda was originally formed to get American military bases out of Arabia. Most the of the World Trade Center bombers were Arabic. Let the Arabians decide who runs their country. I frankly don't care whether it is the Royal Family of Arabia or Bin Laden himself (although I really think he is dead). Let all this terroristic shit occur where it belongs---amongst these warring factions in distant foreign countries. We better begin paying a little attention to those in our own country who are falling further and further behind any basic economic standard of living. The gap between the affluent and the poor is growing more rapidly in this country than any other modern industrialized nation in the world. The trillions of dollars we are now spending on all these global military adventures should cease---both because it is the right thing to do and because a growing number of 'common' folk in our own country need help along with a growing global need to spend a lot of money to protect the environment and reduce green house gases. The costs here are tremendous but we ought to bite the bullet and address these issues.

A country which is securely strong does not need to fear world courts, negotiations, compromises, working collaboratively with others, and facing severe global problems directly with energetic determination to make the world a better place for all of humanity. The real global enemy today is not Bin Laden, the Muslim right, the Christian right, blacks, gays, hispanics, flag burners, pot smokers----the real global enemy is the use of violence to solve global conflict.

Pt 2, Terminational Yrs, Figuring It All Out

Part 2, The Terminational Years: Figuring It All Out :

One of my friends has referred to me as 'Professor Doomsday'. But in this process of devising my game plan for my terminational years any 'Doomsday' is really irrelevant. If the U.S., at some point in my lifetime, becomes some sort of 'Baghdad West', all plans by any of us become void, and all our lives, like those in Iraq, will become mired in violence, killing, and the ability to protect one's material gains an impossibility. We will all function like animals in a ghetto like environment---a sort of our turn to run but not be able to hide. Of course I could be wrong about the likelihood of such a sequence---I have not always been right, one time I thought I was wrong----and perhaps should it all end up that way it could very well be after I am dead. So the following plan simply ignores such a scenario.

So here I go starting with "Live and Let Live" and seeking contentment through my own activities, not attempting to burden others with the task of providing me contentment. I can do this kind of thing in part because my dad had some pretty solid takes on life and parenting. I never appreciated the wisdom until I myself became much older. In my formative years he led by example and gave me ample room to be myself. If I wanted advice I usually had to ask, he wasn't exactly dictating life for me. My mother attempted that role and so the balance was kind of perfect. The most my father would do is opinion sometimes "I think you are going to find that is not a good idea". My mother, like any conscientious mother, would try to stop me from associating with any 'uncouth' kids. When I formed a friendship with a Charlie Merritt from Crotonville, the part of Ossining known for it's 'bad' kids, my mother had a fit. When my father would drive me over to spend the day in Crotonville he would advise me that "a lot of these boys have a rough family life and sometimes do things which I don't want you to ever get involved in. It is right for you to be Charlie's friend and be aware of how others live, but the best way for you to be his friend is never to engage in any activity which you know you shouldn't. Don't be weak, they have to accept your standards when with you, you don't have to accept theirs." In high school my parents had a huge fight over whether I should be required to work on the grounds crew in the summer. My mother wanted my Dad to find me a job amongst a better 'class' of people. My father took the tact that "Reid is too sheltered, he needs exposure to all kinds of others. It is better that he do so while we can influence him. After he has graduated he will be on his own. We shouldn't teach him to fear others, but to understand others. At some point he needs the opportunity to make right decisions and it may as well be right now while we still can influence him." In my productive years my parents never attempted in any fashion to run my life. My brother used to try and get my father to finance or sign off on a loan for this or that venture but my father never would. He made it clear the same thing applied to me. He would tell me, "you are not handicapped and you are an adult. You are now responsible to make something of yourself. You don't need to have everything all at once. You are clever enough to figure out how to get from point A to point B. Whether you are strong enough to do it in an honorable way remains to be seen. My responsibility now is to ensure your mother and I have enough money to support us in our retirement years. That is the best gift we can give you and Will. We don't want to be a burden to either of you down the road."

In short my parents were role models, not dictators, and never raised me in any kind of cocoon. As a result during my productive years I never really had to fear others, or was burdened with a lot of built in prejudices, or rushed to prejudge the behavior of others. With the so called 'riffraff" of life I learned if you just listened and let them talk they would almost always be your friend. I learned there are often understandable reasons why some people behave and feel like they do. I learned there is far more sadness in life than happy ending stories. I learned it is far more difficult to deal with those who climbed their way to the top with a driven determination to achieve as much money and titles as they could. It often doesn't do much good to listen to them, they tend to tell you what you want to hear, not what they are really up to, they are master's of manipulation, deception, and are rigid. Once they formulate a plan and some rules, the plan and rules become an end in themselves. To the extent any others will suffer unjustly from their plan or rules, to them--- so be it. But I learned also they are vulnerable, but only because in my profession I was tenured. The only real power they had over me was distribution of perks, advancing a person with titles and more money etc. Fortunately for me I made ample enough money for my needs and was content to function on the front line in the classroom. I'll take an assortment of young people any day with whom to daily deal as opposed to a sizable percentage of administrators. Actually, I have a sort of distant empathy with most administrators. They are rarely 'happy contented campers'. They have to look over their shoulders constantly, every day is often harried, the pressures never ending, and most will die without ever having 'smelled the flowers'. Anyway, they are vulnerable IF your actions are on behalf of others, NOT YOURSELF. You can make them do the right thing for others, when necessary, by simply taking the issue at hand and blowing it up outside any private meetings with them. File memos all over the place, organize others to confront them etc. At some point the administrator will have to do the right thing for the aggrieved parties, and for their revenge just wait for your name to come across their desk for anything involving money or titles. In my case their wait never ended. I doubt they really hated me as much as they just wanted me kept a safe distance away.

At last I am ready for my terminational game plan. I think a lot of people fear dying alone. I agree the fear is real and justified, but in reality it just seems first, we all die gradually. As our supporting cast in life dies off we all lose a bit of our own self with each such death, including pets. Secondly, many of the things so dear to us in our younger years become moot in our older years, and that list is a long one including sport participation, sex, all kinds of hobbies, old friendships, etc. You really are not the person you once were and to make it even worse, the world is not the same world you knew when younger. This, to me, is all part of the dying process.

I think everyone needs to realize from the get-go at the start of their terminational years that everyone essentially dies alone. This excludes getting killed suddenly in a car crash and stuff like that. But if life doesn't end suddenly and quickly then you are going to die alone. Any friends or spouses or offspring become essentially observers. It will be you who will be doing the dying and all the thoughts and feelings about it will be yours, not theirs. It is great to have a compatible spouse if you die first. But one of you will be left to finnish the race alone therefore needing at such a late stage in life to adjust to being alone. In a kind of weird way, my unique tragedy in the realm of love has left me well suited to dying alone. This sounds kind of stupid I guess but I feel less alone when alone, and sometimes---I never feel more alone than in a crowd. Early on in my career I took a bad situation, made the best I could of it, and survived. Several of those who made it possible for me to survive were not within any boundary which would enable me to consequently protect them, and they lost their jobs. That has weighed on me ever since. I have learned to view my survival as no different, except in the particulars, to what everyone had to do---work with what they had and try to survive. Unfortunately, by the time anyone learns enough to really live, they are old enough to die---the terminational years will have arrived.

I begin my terminational years with financial security. Without this a game plan would be difficult. This frees me to focus on my own peculiar likes, my personality, my priorities, my obligations, my strengths, weaknesses, etc. My primary obligation, as I see it, is to make sure I return any accumulated wealth back into the society from which it came. With good luck, and the many kindnesses of others, both of which were an integral part of any financial success on my part, I know in my heart this wealth needs to be used as a vehicle to help level the playing field for those less fortunate. Of course I wish I could just pray a lot and make things better for the less fortunate, or participate in a lot of religious rituals designed, I guess, to make God help the less fortunate, but helping the less fortunate and leveling the playing field for them, is to me the religious obligation of the more fortunate. I could, I guess, go work in a soup kitchen or visit the sick in hospitals etc. but what does that do to level the playing field? Nothing. Are those sorts of things worthless? Of course not, and if I had little money then that would be about all I could do. Each is obligated to do what they can, but I think all those with accumulated wealth are obligated to use that wealth, immediately or at death, to help level the playing field for the less fortunate. We are unarguably the richest nation on earth, but we are hardly, in any real sense, a Christian country. No truly Christian country, with our wealth, would ever spend more money to educate some children than others, leave millions with poor medical care, or allow the wealth to become more and more concentrated in the hands of a few. When 1% of the population in this country owns more of our wealth than the bottom 90%, this is not a Christian country. When living wages become more and more obsolete while wealth becomes more and more an inheritable event, this is not a Christian country. Having the above as sort of my condensed version of religion, I will now begin to focus on letting some of my accumulated wealth be directed to leveling the playing field. Most of my wealth I think I will let continue to accumulate until my death. Unfortunately the religious right has made it difficult for me to ensure my religious beliefs can be actualized. If I were to become incapacitated in some form or fashion (mentally or physically) with some sort of condition which requires massive expenditure of money to keep me alive for X number of months or even years, I find this abhorrent to my own religious beliefs. Were this situation to happen I would want to be put to sleep painlessly permanently and my money spent on those in need who still have a life to live ahead of them. Thus I will instruct my Attorney for Health Care to either find a doctor who will quietly do this, or immediately give all my money to those organizations listed in my will so that my own money cannot possibly be used for such a farce as keeping me alive against my own wishes. I have never read any religious scripture anywhere which directs a person to live as long as they possibly can under any circumstances. If a person really believes God decides when you die, not any person, then fine----he/she should stop using modern medicine entirely, quit trying to stop what God is trying to do to you, suffer to your heart's content, and wait for the angels to come carry you away. But please, you do your thing and let others, with differing religious beliefs, do theirs. This is probably the best example of why Church and State need to be separated. ( Part 3 to follow.)

Iacocca on State of the Nation

Subject: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
(Excerpt) --- By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening?
Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder.
We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right
over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we
can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.
But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads
when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the
damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and
maybe I have. But, someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this
country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free
pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war
on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a
huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most
famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in
handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning
and nobody seems to know what to do. And, the press is waving pom-poms
instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America
my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough.
How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're
not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two
years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to - as soon
as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them
to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic
duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation
as a straight shooter. So , I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not
pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those
young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust
politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up!
These guys work for us.

Who Are These Guys, Anyway?

Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in
Washington? Well, we voted for them~or at least some of us did. But
I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the
Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding
answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech
treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or
liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's
part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of
factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals.
And, we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make
us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of
Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and
Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great
leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

The Test of a Leader

I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand
a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine
points - not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm
Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or
complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader
should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks
up. Like it or not, this crew Is going to be around until January
2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008.
Then, let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates
who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

So, here's my "C list":

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of
the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously,
because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags
about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he
says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United
States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once
said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a
government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I
should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush
disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox
News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different
ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how
does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of
arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you
just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big
point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they
all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened,
because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong
track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even
then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was
calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was
right.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try
something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush
prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is
spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of
flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his
certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush
a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the
Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President - the explosive mix
of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing
the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me
he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be
well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when
you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a
steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My
instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your
instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter
was settled. And, as we all now know , it wasn't.

Leadership is all about managing change - whether you're leading a
company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative.
You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard
Business School.

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the
mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and
telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know
how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time
trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem.
I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive
you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the
truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other
things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who
didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being
told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've
stopped listening to him.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the
difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the
right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's
character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does
it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold
action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows
little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops
(not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to
their deaths - for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy
because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his
daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are
questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man
of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes
for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage.
George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he
likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, my gun is bigger than your
gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and
bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table
and talk.

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you
know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance
unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a
series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums
packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.

To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION - a fire in your belly.
You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get
something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set
the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S.
President - four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his
ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told
an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was
catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.

It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-
seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in
1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing
Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so
little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find
the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy.
Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's
the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust
him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great
guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a
global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he
doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding
around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders.
Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome
shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up
behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right
through the roof.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've
got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got
to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush
brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him
competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've
got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life
support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far)
in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem
solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on
the back burner.

You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this
Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in
the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham,
who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big
Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel.
Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got
going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your
common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of
vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have
common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know - Mr.they'll-
welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-
mission-accomplished Bush.

Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic
home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based
world - and I like it here."

I think our current President should visit the real world once in a
while.

The Biggest C is actually CRISIS.
Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis.
It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory.
Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a
battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world
comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other
time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the
ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat
to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting
there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on
tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the
quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to
reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't
safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for
the day and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his
bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our
wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be
okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get
his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And
what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the
road to Iraq - a road his own father had considered disastrous when he
was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a
higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality
based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

A Hell of a Mess

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan
for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest
deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing
edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered
by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in
power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our
borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every
which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the
leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where
are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and
common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get
the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than
making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?
We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and
all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina.
Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the
hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were
made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down,
fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just
crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what
you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we
can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have
believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three"
referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen - and, more
important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down
the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care
problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are
eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on
your asses and do nothing, and remain silent while our democracy is
being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity.
What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will
call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine
for a change?

Had Enough?

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm
trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I
believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living
through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced
some of our worst crises - the Great Depression, World War II, the
Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil
crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If
I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing
on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether
it's building a better car or building a better future for our
children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm
raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me,
believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close.
So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all
we've had enough.

Thrones of Tyranny

5/18/07 Thrones of Tyranny:

My cousin and I often engage in spirited discussions about football. Not so much about the games themselves, but because I tend to be as interested in player personalities as much as their performance. This leads to differing perceptions of character quality, team 'playerness', etc. Recently Ricky Williams was dismissed from football because a drug test once again found traces of marijuana in his system. Ricky is a mild mannered, pensive, light hearted running back who often spends off season living in a tent somewhere's in the wilderness or participating in some sort of off the wall group activities to improve his depth of life understanding. Whether any of this ever achieves much would not be for me to judge. Nothing about Ricky would lend any stranger to think he would ever remotely be one of the better running backs in the league. In football Ricky would be the square peg the League bosses try to fit into a round hole, a gentle pensive soul in a rough and violent sport. It appears that what the League has done to Ricky is legal, at least in the absence of any court challenge. It is also clear that what the league did was a willful act, in no way or form was it an action mandated by any laws outside of football. Marijuana does not have to be listed by the league as one of the drugs to be tested for in random drug tests. It behooves any boss, but especially any bosses responsible for the employment of large numbers of employees---and even more especially if the industry is a monopoly---to make decisions which ensure no employee is denied the opportunity for the wrong reason to pursue their career. After all, in this case Ricky can't just go work for a different employer---there is only one professional football league in this country.

In matters of individual freedom, justice, ethical behavior, and just logic in general I always turn to Lincoln. His understanding of human nature and the best form of governance to achieve the highest level of justice and freedom for all remains the 'last best hope' for good governance. This is probably the reason there are more books written about Lincoln than any other figure in history with the exception of Jesus.

"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it." This is where it always starts in matters of achieving justice for any situation. To logically put any drug on a list of banned drugs for any sport requires evidence that the drug impacts in a negative or positive way to performance. It is understandable and forgivable for the general public to be sold a bill a goods about anything from a particular war, economic policy, taxes, the medical impact of recreational drugs, etc. But corporate employers paid huge amounts of money and exalted titles are obligated to adequately and accurately research anything which impacts on the welfare and career of their employees. To implement employment policies solely based on 'league image' or to serve political purposes, is to be a corrupt employer, an unjust employer, an irresponsible employer. An employer should never sacrifice a good employee for the sake of corporate 'image'. But I jump the gun. As I indicated Lincoln is the best place to start in matters of justice, freedom, and responsibility.

"I trust I understand, and truly estimate the right of self-government. My faith in the proposition that EACH man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities of men, as well as to individuals............I object to the assumption that there can be a moral right in the enslaving of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people---a sad evidence that, feeling prosperity we forget right---that liberty, as a principle, we have ceased to revere.......it is the eternal struggle between these two principle---right and wrong---throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other is the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race (or one nation using 'free labor' to live by the fruit of foreign labor) or (an employer seeking to bestride the necks of the employees of his own corporate business), it is the same tyrannical principle........The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name--liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names--liberty and tyranny.....I am for the people of the whole nation doing just as they please in all matters which concern the whole nation; for those of each part doing just as they choose in all matters which concern no other part; and for each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.....This is a world of compensations; those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and under a just God, can not long retain it."

Control over our 'national' professional sport teams is firmly in the hands of select members of the 1% Club in America---the 1% who own as much wealth in the country as the bottom 90%. These professional sport team owners are off in a world pretty much of their own, protected by Congress from the kind of regulations and legal restraints imposed on other businesses in the country. They have a monopoly, there are no restraints as to how much money they can make off this monopoly, they rarely have to answer to the legal system the rest of us are so obligated to do, and for the most part, whatever the owners and Players Union agree to, become the laws upon which they are governed. The TV networks fawn all over the owners, always casting them and the Commissioner in the light of haloed benevolent guardians of keeping our national sports squeaky clean. I don't believe any major league owner has ever been hauled into our court system to answer any charges of illegal financial actions, fraud, etc that other businesses, at least on rare occasions, face. There is just something about owning a professional sport team which does not attract the kind of greedy and shady operatives that too often show up in other industries. Sure. It is so bad, this monopoly of secrecy and privilege, that any new owner has to be approved by the existing owners. There are really two cabals, the owners and the Players Union. Both are free, in the absence of any competition or normal legal restraints, to extract from the public as much money as they can pile up. The only nasty hassle is over how much the Owners get and how much the Players get. We all know what the fans get and Ricky Williams just got.

To keep the public compliant with the situation, professional sport operations become a massive public relations endeavor. The really neat thing about this effort is the eagerness of the media to cooperate---after all the media compete for the lucrative TV and radio contracts. To ever attack, or uncover any of the greediest operations of the leagues would cost any network a small fortune in lost revenues from TV contracts. So I guess in some respects we have a triumvirate---the owners, the players union, and the networks. The whole thing is closer to a mobster operation than the operation of the mob itself. My case here is with the system, not the individuals. When people are left free to abuse power, money, and control, they inevitably will with the possible exception of you and I. And sometimes I wonder about you. The losers here are the public, both the fans (especially the low income fans) and the general public. Cities are routinely blackmailed, select college sports are perverted, the fans are forced to pay exorbitant prices for tickets, teams from one year to the next become often unrecognizable, off the field bad behavior by specially treated wealthy 'brats' from junior high on becomes increasingly frequent and violent, most citizens are no longer able to afford tickets to games (in some instances all the tickets to all the games are season held by the wealthy and corporations). To protect this 'Kingdom' from any reform or investigations the 'Kingdom' has the biggest public relations operation outside of the Presidents of our country. It works. Most every person will complain about prices, player behaviors off the field, player salaries, etc. but suggest city ownership of our national sport teams and this is not received as a good idea. Probably 90% will disagree. Amazing. Like so many other things out of control in our modern society one has to wonder where this is all leading.

One of the public relations objectives of the Owners is to project an image of getting tough on recreational drug abuse. The public eats that up. The public has been eating that up for 50 years, fed on a steady diet of political fear-monging and disinformation. Getting tough on recreational drug abuse, unless the drug in question is used by the majority population, is invariably a toughness applied to the recreational drugs used by a minority of the population. Only when cigarette use, through education, became a bad habit of a distinct minority, was there any crackdown. Rather than go off on my usual tirade here, I will limit this to two principles: Only medical scientists knowledgeable in the science of these recreational drugs should be allowed to let their findings become laws which govern their toxicity to the body or to prohibition of their use. Secondly, recreational drug abuse never was, and never will be, just a bunch of bad ass evil people hell bent on disrupting social tranquility. Recreational drug abuse is a medical problem which develops in response to mental stresses of various sorts---some are mental conditions with a genetic origin and some a product of environmental stresses. We ought never to jail people with medical problems, and for the most part we seldom do, unless they they are poor, the wrong race, or members of a despised group. The ones we jail by the hundreds of thousands are the sellers, which conveniently tend to be the poorest of our youth living in the bowels of communities destroyed by our War on Drugs. It is not much exaggeration to state that most people have no comprehension of the nature of recreational drug abuse until someone close to them has one. Then, just like that, they suddenly realize the problem is a sad mental condition needing treatment. It upsets them, at that point, that there are laws which could lock up their young son or daughter for decades.

Many of us develop mental states which are alleviated by drugs. We go to the doctor and get our drugs by prescription. No one labels us a dopehead, tries to arrest us or the doctor who gave us the drug, or threatens to put us or our doctor in jail for decades. The day all drug use to alter our mental state is controlled by the medical field and not the police and politicians is the day when progress will begin toward really helping those with needs. Marijuana is by far less toxic than almost all other popular recreational drugs of abuse and far less toxic than some of the prescription drugs used to treat mental conditions. Doctors should be deciding to what extent, if at all, any drug is used to alleviate mental stresses. It should never be under the control of public opinion, politicians, police, or the Commissioner of Football.

Playing professional football is surely immensely stressful. In fact life for everyone is stressful. I take a glass of wine with my supper every night (unless I eat out, then I am too cheap to pay the cost) because it gives me a pleasant buzz. Some can't do that because they have a genetic makeup such that they will likely not be able to stop and end up alcoholics. Some combat stress by smoking pot instead of a glass of wine. The poor in the ghetto, under high levels of stress and frustration, may turn to heroin to relieve the mental pain while the affluent under similar strain for differing reasons, may get a prescription for valium or other sedatives. Any of this should be under medical supervision, period. And this medical supervision should be available to all citizens, ESPECIALLY those in the most dire of environments.

But enough, what happened to Ricky Williams, by the ignorance of the Commissioner of Football should not be permissible. No one, to my knowledge, who ever was a coach, teammate or friend of Ricky Williams has ever remotely indicated he was not a valued employee however that is measured, and thus his firing, based on any job performance criteria, is a travesty of justice.

My cousin won the argument on the legality of what happened. I was naively under the impression that you could only fire a person for job related poor performance or the firing was discriminatory. It turns out that in most states I guess you can fire an employee at will unless you state the reason to be one of selected protected categories, like based on sex, or age, or race or sexual orientation etc. Otherwise I guess you can kind of fire them without cause. This puzzles me though. It seems that the existence of these exceptions kind of creates a reverse protection for the protected categories. Like anyone else can be fired for any reason unless they are a minority race or a certain age, etc in which case they could go to court and claim you fired them for reasons of race or age in this case. Crazy. My lawyer also pointed out, that for the most part a lot of this is moot. Larger businesses often have unions and unions invariably put into the contract the specific reasons for which an employee can be fired and these tend to be all work related causes. Work for the government and I guess it is virtually impossible to be fired. Small businesses rarely fire employees except for work related matters or personality conflicts of some sort. My lawyer pointed out that it is very rare for anyone to be fired for marijuana use on the side except in security jobs with random drug tests. Acoholics often have problems because of the after affects of the drinking which become evident on the job. She then humorously told me that the most common personal off the job indulgence which leads to bad job performance is staying up too late and being tired on the job because of that or working two jobs and not getting enough sleep. Her point is that few people in small businesses are being fired for wrong reasons since they value a good worker and personally tend to know them and be protective. The likelihood of a small business owner running drug tests to check for marijuana use is almost unheard of she pointed out. Were it otherwise millions of Americans would be at risk of losing their jobs.

Well good luck to Ricky. He is lucky. He has made a lot of trusted and faithful friends in football and I am confident he will be given opportunities to make a decent living at something. He never did put money as a high priority. Even when making a huge salary he lived in small houses and often in a tent off season. He always was smiling, pleasant, fair, cooperative, a hard worker, and unusually unselfish for a football player. He never seemed at all competitive about how much he played or what asked to do. He seemed always to enjoy what was on his plate. I think maybe I need spend a few months in a tent. Nah, I am a spoiled creature of comfort now, too far along in life to be sleeping in a tent. But I admit, one learns a lot from observing people like Ricky. He gives you food for thought about priorities and perspectives in life.

I still find it odd and unjust that the Commissioner of Football can be an inebriated sop a great deal of the time, or a notoroious womanizer, a gopher for the owners, or a greedy amasser of great wealth on the backs of the common citizens, raise ticket prices to any level to support outrageous salaries for themselves and the better players, or blackmail the taxpayers of one city or another---any of this and more, and by the laws agreed to by the Commissioner and the Player's Union, such a commissioner would not be considered detrimental to the game of football. Poor Ricky, he smokes pot on his own time to relax and reduce the stresses in his life instead of roaring from bar to bar in a drunken binge, and he is considered detrimental to the best interests of football. Perhaps noting this oddity is clearly peculiar to me. I would rather keep Ricky in the game and change the whole structure of how professional sports are run, giving the fans a place at the bargaining table. Professional sport teams are essentially national endeavors and should meet the needs of all citizens and operate on reasonable salary schedules and rules of behavior. Maybe just then, sport fans would find a measurable trace of Terrell's "fair is fair" in league contracts and rules.

P.S. I suppose I need add the following statement: I do not now, or ever have, used marijuana to relieve the stresses in my life. Hey, maybe I should have. Smile. The perspective above comes from my career as a Physiologist who taught for decades a course titled: "The Physiological Aspects of Drugs and Drug Abuse" Most of the recreational drugs of abuse have been around for a long time. In almost all cases we know exactly on which kind of cells the receptors are found, the physiologic effects on varied body systems, the side effects, the toxicity, etc----just like we know all this for many other drugs. The real challenge in Drug abuse is to better understand the origin and best treatment for those mental states which generate recreational drug abuse. It has been the misfortune in this country to have politicians and police get the control over these drugs. The result has been a total disaster, one that would take a book to adequately document.

"An Ordinary Man"

5/14/07 "An Ordinary Man":

This is the title of a book I recently read. I hesitated to order the book, upon which the movie 'Hotel Rwanda' was made. Like some Americans I was familiar with the basic stats of the situation and had written an earlier musing about the genocide in Rwanda. So it seemed pointless to read a book probably about the gory details. I don't even like movies with a lot of blood and senseless cruelty. I don't even watch the 'Sopranos' with the implied violence. I don't watch a sport like boxing where the purpose is essentially to produce enough brain damage to knock someone out. It pleases me that very few young people ever take up boxing. But I ordered the book anyway since at the price I pay for these books, it is no big deal if I never read some for whatever reason.

In this little sick episode of modern senseless conflict, 800,000 people were butchered by their friends, neighbors, and countrymen over a period of 100 days. That's eight thousand lives a day. We get at least mildly angry in our own country when 3000 of our young people get killed in Iraq over a 5 year period. But the loss of 8000/day of other people in another country meant little if anything. Bill Clinton admits it is the portion of his Presidency which he regrets the most. The sanctity of life in the modern mindset is pretty much compartmentalized irrespective of race, religion, sex, economic status, or country of citizenship---some sort of twisted version of family values, a kind of only me and my kind count. I think most all of us are infected to varying degrees. I sense it is defensive: if we were to admit the reality of much of what goes on, we would be depressed.

Briefly, which is difficult for me, the situation over in Rwanda was as follows. It really all started in 1885 when representatives from Austria-Hungary, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Spain, the United States, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, and Norway met to partition up Africa. The invented borders had no relationship to reality including geography, linguistic considerations, tribal compatibilities or anything else. At the time the British Prime Minister remarked, "We have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where they were." Germany won Rwanda but Germany pretty much ignored the place, so little changed, it continued to be just a lot of local self sufficient agricultural villages run by the local elders. After Germany was defeated in WW1 Rwanda was given to Belgium. Of course the Western World would have had zero success is controlling any of these African areas except, like the case with the American Indians, the Europeans had guns. But even with guns there were so few whites compared to blacks in these regions that to control the populations it was necessary to divide the population in order to control it.
Thus in 1933 all Rwandans were given identity cards labeling them either Tutsi or Hutu.
Wealth in Rwanda back then was determined by the number of cows and goats a person owned. Essentially the wealthier Rwandans were labeled Tutsi and the poorer ones were labeled Hutu. The wealthier ones were given governmental type jobs and guns and were put in control of the country under a appointed King. In any situation like this the number of people with money and power are outnumbered by those without money and power so there were a lot more Hutus than Tutsi. Despite the guns and policies of divide and conquer, the African countries proved too difficult to politically control from Europe and so the African countries, rather quickly at some point, began to gain their independence. In the 1950's Belgium was forced to give Rwanda independence and set up elections. It really was not a hell of lot different than the recent elections in Iraq. Guess who won the elections? Yep, the Hutus. It would be not much different than letting the slaves suddenly vote to see who runs the plantation or letting the prisoners suddenly vote to see who runs the prison. What is good for the gander is good for the goose and suddenly it was the Tutsi who could not attend schools, could not hold important jobs, and at the slightest provocation were slaughtered. Many sought refuge in neighboring countries, many managed to move to another part of Rwanda and forge a new identity card. Remember, Rwandans can't tell one Rwandan from another by looking at each other, it is only the identity cards which can do that.

Things eventually settled down a bit and the two groups managed to coexist, much as is true with minorities in many other countries. Since the two groups were indistinguishable from each other outside of the identity cards there was a lot of intermarriage, they coexisted as neighbors, kids eventually went to the same schools etc. Then came economic hard times, the specifics of which I know nothing about, and the government leaders, to stay in power needed a scapegoat. Minorities are always convenient scapegoats and tickets to re-election. Things would be better, it always goes, except 'we have these useless scumbags causing problems which are dragging us all down". This sort of logic is simply inherent in human nature.

The government sanctioned radio stations started playing modern Western music and mixing it in with a lot of 'shock jocks' Rwandan style. This meant the Tutsi were increasingly the brunt of belittlement, accused of secret sabotage planning, and ever slowly increasing warnings from these radio broadcasts that if the Tutsi were not 'eliminated' they would one day 'eliminate' the Huti majority. To exascerbate all this, the Tutsi who had earlier fled the country after the elections had organized a rebel army in neighboring countries in the pattern of an Al Queda like operation. While this rebel army was numerically much smaller than the Hutsi army in Rwanda it was much more motivated, much more organized, and thus slowly began to recapture certain areas of Rwanda. Then suddenly the President of Rwanda's plane was shot down as it was landing in the Capital. While to this day no one knows who did it, the shock was sufficient to push the majority population over the edge. Add to the mix was the fact that France sided with the Huti because the Huti were more fluent in French while Belgium favored the Tutsi who were more fluent in English. The Catholic Church was for the Huti since they tended more to be Cathlolics and the Hutsi had been oppressed earlier in history by the Tutsi. What happened next is surreal. Suddenly the govt sanctioned radio stations ordered all Hutsi to go out an kill all the Tutsi. This was no sudden impulsive reflex action in that the govt had already ordered hundreds of thousands of machetes from China for just such a crusade. Just like in the Balkans with Serbia and Croatia and Bosnia, neighbors did just that. And not just kill them, but in the cruelest possible way, hack them to death. This was easy enough with close neighbors as you knew who the Tutsi were. But on a grandeur scale roadblocks were set up for those Tutsi who tried to escape and if they could not produce an identity cared stating they were Hutsi, then they were killed and the bodies piled next to the road.

For 100 days, all across Rwanda, this slaughter continued and, no matter where the Tutsi fled, into Churches or any other sought after refuge, they got slaughtered---often parents forced to kill children, children forced to kill parents, children forced to throw grandparents down wells and covered with rocks, spouses forced to kill each other, priests forced to kill parishioners, parishioners forced to kill priests, and any other horror you can dream up.
The exception was Hotel Rwanda. None of the refugees who fled there were killed over the 100 day slaughter even though the hotel manager was a Hutu.

The managers name was Paul Rusesabagina. He is the subject of this book's title: "An Ordinary Man", much like one might title a book on Lincoln "An Ordinary man" based on either one's roots and background. Neither Rusesabagina or Lincoln were ordinary men. I loved this book because Rusesabagina was so Lincolnesque in his behavior, methodology, and understanding of human nature. Both men understood human nature better than most of us could ever hope to, both had a universal moral compass that stood apart from any segment of humanity whether the segment be based on race, religion, gender, economic status, or any other characterization. Both, with their understanding of human nature, were able to bring out the best in the worst of people in the worst of times. Both calmed the storm, never fanned the flames. Both never wavered from the task at hand even though both knew it meant sure death for them personally. Somehow Rusesabagina lived by afterward fleeing to Belgium, while Lincoln did not escape death. I have claimed Rusesabagina is Lincolnesque. You be the judge as the rest of this will be nothing more than his own words from the book. I am not saying Resesabagina had the breadth or depth of Lincoln's insights nor that he has the literary skills of Lincoln, but given the task at hand to save the refugees holed up in his hotel, 40 to a room, over a 90 day period, Lincoln himself could not have done better. What follows are excerpts from the book:

"Whoever does not talk to his father never knows what his grandfather said..........We (Rwandans) are obsessed with the past..........There is no greater gift to an insecure leader that quite matches a vague 'enemy' who can be used to whip up fear and hatred among the population. It is a cheap way to consolidate one's holD on power. And this is just what the new regime did (does this sound familiar?)............All the impoverished nations on earth, in fact, have these few basic things: a flag, an army, borders, something resembling a government, and at least one luxury hotel where the rich foreign visitors and aid workers can stay. So there is always a demand for a spot of opulence in a nation of mud houses. The cost for a room is usually equal to the yearly income of an average person in that country. I am not saying this is right. But this is the reality of modern Africa. In Rwanda that place is Hotel Mille Collines (Hotel Rwanda).........I was never a prey to bullies or to jealous thugs. I suppose I was adept at using the same skill at negotiation that made my earlier house painting profession such a lucrative business. If anybody tried to threaten me I would simply look him in the eye and ask him in a firm but friendly voice, 'Why?' The bully would have no choice but to engage me verbally, and this made violence next to impossible. I learned that it is very difficult to fight someone with whom you are already talking.................Someone who deals can never be an absolute hard-liner..........most politics is an outgrowth of emotions that may or may not have any relation to the rational.............He was preaching an ideology---and an identity---based on nothing more than a belief in the murderous intentions of the enemy by saying over the airways 'Know that the person whose throat you do not cut will be the one who cuts yours'.............The grand purpose, as I have said, was not really to avenge the slights committed by the Tutsi royal court 60 years earlier. That was merely the cover story, the cheap trick that could rouse a mob into supporting the strong men. And that was the true purpose of all the revolutionary rhetoric: It was all about Habyarimana and the rest of the elite trying to keep a grip on the reins of government. It seemed almost irrelevant to point out that Hutus had been in a position of undisturbed power for 35 years and that the Tutsi were in a position to affect very little of Rwanda's current miserable condition----even if they had wanted to. It was a revolution all right, but there was nobody to overthrow. The Hutu government wanted all the anger in Rwanda pointed toward any target but itself........My only goal was saving the lives of the people upstairs, and questions of my taste in friendship were secondary----if they were relevant at all. If you stay friendly with monsters you can find cracks in their armor to exploit. Shut them out and they can kill you without a second thought. I reminded myself of this over and over...........Facts are almost irrelevant to most people. We make decisions based on emotion and then justify them later with whatever facts we can scrounge up in our defense..........People are never as reasonable as they seem to be----in fact, 'reason' is usually an afterthought, nothing more than a cover story for the feelings inside..............There is no sin that someone should die for it. When you start thinking like that you become an animal yourself.......I dreaded machetes. The Interhahamwe were known to be extremely cruel with the people they chopped apart; first cutting tendons so the victims could not run away, then removing limbs so that a person could see their body coming apart slowly. Family members were often forced to watch, knowing they were next. Their wives and their children were often raped in front of them while this was happening. Priests helped kill their congregations. In cases, the congregation helped kill their priests. Tusi wives went to sleep next to their Hutu husbands and awoke to find the blade of a machete sawing into their neck, and above them, the grimacing face of the amn who had sworn to love and cherish them for life. And Tutsi wives also killed their husbands. Children threw their grandparents down pit toilets and heaved rocks on the top of them until the cries stopped. Unborn babies were sliced from their mothers' wombs and tossed about like soccer balls. Severed heads and genitals were on display. It had become killing for killing's sake, killing for sport, killing for nothing. It raged on, all around the hotel................UN member states signed a treaty in 1948 threatening criminal penalties for the leaders of any regime found to have conducted an extermination campaign against a particular religious or racial group. But the U.S. dragged its feet, fearing the encroachment of a world government telling it how to act. It was not until 1986 that the U.S. Senate finally ratified the agreement. As Harvard Univ. scholar Power has pointed out, the world's foremost superpower, America, has almost never acted to stop a race of people from being exterminated, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence. And, of course, there was not natural resource in Rwanda that anybody cared about either, only human beings in danger........Even a proposal to jam the frequencies of the RTLM was rejected on the grounds that the Army National Reserve airplane required for the overflights cost $8500 an hour to fly. If that plane had been kept aloft for every second of the genocide it would have worked out to about $24 for each life taken that might otherwise have been saved.......All I wanted to do anymore was the work in front of me; I had lost the desire for everything else. At some point in that strange twilight of the genocide I had taken leave of myself as a sentient person. Death no longer frightened me......My earlier life had showed me how to respect myself by respecting others......War is hell, and ugly things happen in its midst. I know this. But they always create permanent resentments that have a way of erupting later in history.........I tasted, in that moment, the poison and self hatred in my country's bloodstream, that irresistible fury against a ghost, the quenchless desire to make someone pay for an unrightable wrong............I was enormously disappointing to me that so many priests and pastors caught the hateful virus in 1994 and refused to do anything for those who were begging them for help. The church remained mostly silent when it should have been speaking out in a loud voice as the hateful propaganda prior to the genocide was being broadcast. Its failure to stand strong in this critical hour was equivalent to complicity.......Nearly half a million children were left parentless by the murders. What happened? Hitler's final solution was supposed to have been the last expression of this monstrous idea, the final time the world would tolerate a deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire race. But genocide remains the most pressing human rights question of the twenty-first century........A sad truth of human nature is that it is hard to care for people when they are abstractions, hard to care when it is not you or somebody close to you. Unless the world community can stop findings ways to dither in the face of this monstrous threat to humanity those words NEVER AGAIN will persist in being one of the most abused phrases in the English language and one of the greatest lies of our times..........We have changed the dancers but the music remains the same. We never talk about conflicts. We just steal what we can whenever our turn comes around...........We get duped by the cheapest tricks in the books. Human beings were designed to live sanely, and sanity always returns. The world rights itself in the long run. This is why I say that the individual's most potent weapon is a stubborn belief in the triumph of common decency. It is a simple belief, but it is not all naive. It is, in fact, the shrewdest attitude possible. It is the best way to sabotage evil. Quiet, ordinary people are often the only people with the real ability to defeat evil.....Except in extreme circumstances it very rarely pays to show hostility to the people in your orbit. And so when evil dropped by for a drink I was able to have a conversation. I could find weaknesses and seek out its soft spots. I could see vanity and the insecurity and even the ghost of common decency inside the minds of killers that would allow me to save lives. I could quietly flip evil's assets against itself. What happened at my hotel was the most extreme form of pragmatism. We would go to any length and do whatever it took to save as many lives as possible. That was my basic ideology. That was the only ideology. ......'What is your life: You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.' (From the Bible). Our time here on earth is short, and our chance to make a difference is tiny. For me the grinding blocks of history came together in such a way that I was able to take what fragile defense I had and hold it in place for 76 days. If I was able to give much it was only because I had some useful things from my life to give. I am a hotel manager, trained to negotiate contracts and provide shelter for those who need it. My job never changed, even in a sea of fire. Whenever the killing season should next begin and people should become strangers to their neighbors and themselves, my hope is that there will still be those ordinary men who say a quiet no and open the rooms upstairs."

Afterward: Rusesabagina had the chance to leave Rwanda when the killing started. Other hotel management did and were flown to Europe. Rusesabagina refused to leave and even though a Hutu he opted to try to save as many Tutsi as he could. When the killing stopped he had to go to Belgium as he was a wanted man by bitter Huti. I don't know what his present life is since the book and The movie. But prior to either he was simply a cab driver in Belgium. I guess that is the final irony. For all he did the only reward available to him was to be a cab driver. Wow. I guess no hotel chain thought him worthy of being a Hotel Manager in their chain of Hotels. Maybe now, after the book and movie he doesn't need a job. You know, if I owned some multimillion dollar corporation he would get the best title, the biggest office, and the largest salary of anyone in the corporation. He would probably be the only one in that category who had earned the right to such salary and perks.

BUT A CAB DRIVER?

5/11/07 Can the Essence of Truth be Peculiarly Relative?

I guess we all want to know the truth. You know, sort of "find the truth and the truth will set you free". Some truths seem more true than others, like "what goes up must come down"---- except for the rare exceptions under certain conditions. So that truth is almost always true. All of us exist--- and clearly, in some sense of the word exist, our existence has to be true. But it is also equally true that sometimes what is true for one might not be true for another. One may like opera and one may like hillbilly music or God forbid, gansta rap. How many times in life have you heard people argue over what music is best? or what kind of art? or even what kind of government? Truth, I guess, is often kind of personal, an elusive mental variant. I hate that truth can so often be elusive, and, that it can often be a relative term kind of angers me. Truth should be truth, period. Sometimes I don't care much, like if your favorite color is blue and mine is yellow. I can handle that. At the other extremes are religious, racial, sexual, political, cultural 'truths'. Find the "truth" in these areas and the "truth" will often get you killed, or cause you to kill or support the killing of others. This sometimes relativity of truth can generate enigmatic notions wrapped in enigmatic levels of emotional rage. Sometimes we can keep the rage within and just wait for an opportunity to teach these truth heathens a lesson, but given the right circumstances it seems human beings can kind of become mass murderers of the most vicious sort, no death being too slow or cruel. Not you or I of course, but others like those in Ireland or Iraq or Serbia or Africa or downtown Detroit seem susceptible and intolerant---uncivilized animals of some sort.

Whatever truth is, it must be important since there is so much killing and hate over truth. When I observe how far so many are willing to go to defend their peculiar insight of a particular 'truth' I think I must be kind of a coward. Not only do I find live and let live mostly acceptable, but I think more than most I end up seeing the 'truth' of a particular issue differently with age---I switch and begin to see it otherwise. One of the benefits of teaching college for so many years is the opportunity, whether you want to or not, to be exposed daily to those who see so many 'truths' differently. Most on either side in this atmosphere tend to dig in and before long the truths become an ingrained, circle the wagons, defend till your last dying breath sort of exercise just like with George Bush's truths. Not I of course, unless it be some sort of more 'important' truth like the inherent qualities of Terrell Owens. I mean some matters you can't let go, and if others can't understand the truth, well they need to be, at minimum, muzzled for life. One has to take a stand someplace. But other times, for reasons not well understood, I tend to listen to those in life traveling a different path. Strange, but the more one listens the less the variation in the perception of 'truth' seems to be so emotionally important. At least one can understand why they feel and act as they do. More importantly are the positive bonds that CAN be established and a willingness on both sides to accommodate differences in a civilized kindly way. UNDERSTANDINGS REALLY CAN BE ACHIEVED, and the bonus achieved by both discordant sides is a kind of positive emotional energy as opposed to the previous negative emotional energy. So many of those 'hell bent' in the pursuit of a 'truth', which is peculiar to them, are essentially wound up hard wired emotionally irrational terrorists of some sort. In a broad sense they are willing to at least figuratively kill for that personally perceived truth. Given the right circumstances the word figuratively could be dropped. Then you have war, murder, genocide, religious cleansing, etc.

The abortion issue, the immigration issue, same sex marriages, flag burning, recreational drug abuse, gun control laws, prayers in school, etc. are all issues in which truth tends often to lie in the eyes of the beholder. It really boils down to my favorite quote on issues like this---this quote relating to pornography: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it". So much of what really angers us about controversial topics boils down to about the same thing, "I know the truth when I see or feel it". Let's face it, when we have to use the word "I" to prove the truth of something, the case becomes, by default, irrelevant. Whatever objectively defines the truth of anything, it is not "I". Not anyone's "I". Not any "I" who wrote some scripture, not the Pope, not any King, not any political leader, not even Terrell Owens---not that he uses the word "I" that often, if I can use the word often very loosely. Very loosely.

I have shied away from the immigration issue because the issue, in terms of cause and effect, is too complex. No one should be in anyone else's country illegally. The world should not be overpopulated and millions scrambling desperately to compete for the dwindling natural resources. Before overpopulation anyone could simply live off the land, just stay put. Not anymore in more and more places. Every country has the right to control it's borders and should do so. We could control our borders and could keep tabs on who lives in our country and gets our jobs, but we never have. So people desperate to make a better living for themselves and their families do what any desperate people have ever done, they risk everything to get to someplace better. The consequence of our failure to control our own borders has resulted in millions of illegal aliens. Many have been here for decades, many have been here a short time. Everyone agrees allowing illegal immigrants to become legal citizens is unfair to those who limit their efforts to come here to legal immigration procedures. Of course the bigger truth is that most countries no longer need or can support more people, so in that sense immigration should just stop. Enough is enough. See, there are 'truths' all over the place here. Find Illegal immigrants and return them to their native land is perfectly logical. But like all these issues, not much is perfectly clear, let alone perfectly right.

When I moved into my condo the building was not finished. Many of the workers were hispanic of some sort. I got to know many of them. Hard workers, often traveled hours just to get to the site. Many were young. I don't know how many were illegal, but I assume a good number probably were. It annoyed me that their English was so poor--damn it, you're here, learn the language. But then if they are illegal where would they go to learn the language, considering the hours and the physical effort of their jobs where would they find the time or energy to school up on English? Like most people, most of these guys were likable chaps---friendly, eager, and in fact trying harder than most of us to better themselves, or at the very least survive at some minimal level. I can't imagine living and existing like they do. And they gambled everything in their lives to live like this. What kind of world are we living in when living like they do here is an achievement worth risking everything for? I agree in principle, if you are here illegally you should be sent back, EXCEPT I would never want to be the one to kick them in the ass and tell them they have to go back and I am quite sure Jesus or Buddha or most any religious prophet would not be willing to force that on them either. So who would I kick in the ass about the situation and make pay? I will tell you who---all the politicians who made no effort to secure our borders over all these years, all those who made no efforts to ensure employers had to have proof of citizenship to hire someone, all those who said illegal aliens can attend our schools. If there are bastards here, these are the guilty parties. We made it clear to these 'unfortunates' for all these years that if they can just manage to get here, they are home free. We as a country made the mistake of not securing our borders. We should at least do so now, but I see no indication we really will close our borders and control who gets hired for our available jobs. There is something unjust about making the 'least' among us pay for our own mistakes of the past---the old "I (or we) made a stupid mistake so you have to pay for it." The ones I have met are not 'bad' people, did not do anything which most of us would not have done given the opportunity to better ourselves. So I guess I would let them stay unless they have a criminal record and just close the border as tight as a drum, and ensure that all employees are properly screened when they are hired. I would also make the penalties severe for anyone attempting to be here illegally. It simply cannot be allowed. I am not saying we should not deport anyone. I would deport any illegal aliens with criminal records and anyone with the last names of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Robertson, etc . I mean, we really do need some cleansing. That's the TRUTH. Smile.

In general, illegal immigration problems across the globe cannot be solved until there is forced responsible reproduction (family planning, population controls); global conflict resolutions by negotiation, compromise, and world courts as opposed to military engagements; the freed up resources from military adventures used to protect the environment; separation of religion from politics, global minimum wages, and limits as to just how much of the world's wealth can be monopolized by the affluent. These are the factors really behind immigration problems and most every other major problem facing our new global economy/society. Going after particular religious, racial, sexual orientation, ethnic, or economic groups is simply a misplaced direction of anger. Until our priorities get rearranged---drastically rearranged---none of the real problems of our time will ever get solved. Of course that is merely the truth as I perceive it. And as a genuine member of the terminational stage of life, my perceived truths are now, if they ever were not, irrelevant. Odd, but being irrelevant is kind of enjoyable. And certainly less stressful.

Post script to original posting: Another 'truth' is that illegal immigrants serve a vital part if keeping our 'bargains' intact. 
We can pay them paltry wages. Once these 'slaves' are gone we would have to pay more for many services and goods. In instances where the government has gone in and cleaned out a factory or business of some sort of all illegal immigrants, the result has been closure of the factory and the community turned overnight into an economic ghetto. Legitimate citizens will not work at such wages---hell they can get more on the unemployment line, and the company can't make profits with higher costs so a crisis occurs and the owners close up, and go elsewhere to open a new venture in a new place with legitimate wages or move elsewhere and use immigrants until that new place is closed down. Illegal immigrants are really just an altered form of slavery. A lot of people benefit from 'slavery' of any sort or ilk, including all of us, and the reality sometimes is that we don't like immigrants but we really like some of the benefits of having them here. There is that truth dilemma again.