The Ferguson ‘Mess’

The Ferguson ‘Mess’

If ever personal bias and fabrication have run amuck, this incident where a police officer kills a person, is a stark example. 

Who was at fault became an almost instantaneous decision by most all of us.  And hardly anyone was basing their opinion on any facts. Almost universally, our feelings about the situation were fueled by prior racially formed attitudes. This musing will try to separate out what is pure feelings and fact. 

First of all many ‘facts’ will not likely ever be known. Parents grieving over the death of a son carries no connection to fact. How many parents ever want to do anything but defend their offspring in such a situation? 

Most people who have been protesting across the nation, and especially in Ferguson, did not know either the policeman or the person shot. Even those who might have cursorily known either, did not know them enough to project exactly what either might be capable of. 

But there are things we can know that relate to the situation:

1. People who live in, and are raised in environments in which unemployment is like 40% or more, are not going to be happy campers. Imagine living in a community where a few have a lot, and the rest are split between those having barely enough and those having nothing. 

2.  Many kids who are raised in crime infested areas, with poor schools to attend, and often unsatisfactory home environments and peer pressures, are not going to arrive at adulthood without a lot of unfocused generalized anger.  They are going to feel trapped, unloved, and hopeless about achieving a better life. To them, ‘nobody cares for, or likes them, so they don’t like others either, and especially any of those perceived as ‘responsible’ for their environment.  

3. Most blacks who live in Ferguson are good people living under stressful situations. They do the best they can. They resent the endless suspicion cops and others have toward them in so many situations. And they resent the police have not made their neighborhoods safe. And they resent that all but one of the policemen on the force are white. 

4. It is always wrong for any citizen to refuse to obey a reasonable order by a policeman. Certainly if a policeman tells us not to walk down the middle of the street, we are obligated to comply. It is a mistake for any society to actually support the notion that one can defy a policeman, scuffle with a policeman, and run away and feel, until subdued, the policeman is not in charge. When we run from the police we kind of have asked for trouble. This is not to say police should shoot anyone who runs, but it is to say we will have created a situation where it will be difficult to say when a policeman is going to feel it necessary to shoot. No one has to run. And we better be careful about saying there are no real risks to running away from the police.  

5. It is difficult to portray any citizen as as some sort of innocent and harmless soul when shortly before this incident this same citizen was on tape committing a strong arm robbery. It was no robbery out of desperation for food or money, the whole demeanor on tape was one of an arrogant, angry bully-thug type. So we are to believe that a few moments later his demeanor had changed?

6. For all of us to believe what we want to believe makes us all dangerous fools, some more guilty than others. 

7. There certainly should be anger by every American citizen that so many neglected places like Ferguson exist. We should be angry that any segment of our population suffers from so much unemployment, poor schools, lack of good health care, and lack of personal security. Every society is responsible for the welfare of all it’s constituent groups. These people in Ferugson weren’t born to be angry, weren’t born to have poor schools, weren’t born to have poor home environments, weren’t born to have no access to jobs, etc. There is no reason why any child in American, one of the richest countries in the world, can’t ensure that every child has an excellent school to attend, that every child has access to good health care, that every parent has access to a job which pays a living wage, that the makeup of public service employees represent roughly the make-up of the community, or that 2-5% of the citizens do not own 90% of the wealth in our country.  We cannot short-change children at every step of their development and expect them to always turn out to be model citizens. To the extent we tolerate any of this as a nation, we are all guilty and part of the Ferguson tragedy. At no time in history has any nation survived with such disparity between the few wealthy and the many poor. Riots begin to happen and when chaos ensues, the ‘have nots’ always win against the ‘haves’.  The ‘haves’ have a lot to protect and the ‘have nots’ have nothing to lose.  Ask the owners of all the buildings that get looted during riots. The Governor called out the National Guard but no military force can protect life and property once chaos sets in. Ask Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, etc. 

8. We seem to think none of the above can happen to us. We think that if we jail enough people, and supply police and soldiers with enough weapons, and wall ourselves off in affluent neighborhoods  (our own green zones) that we are all safe, that we ourselves ‘earned’ all these perks as kids growing up, and that we, with much, owe nothing to those with ‘less’. As a ‘Christian nation’ did Jesus ever preach any of this? 

Right now these riots over the Ferguson incident are being conducted by a really small percentage of people across the country and even in Ferguson itself. Who are all these people who say ‘I don’t need the facts, I can feel the truth?”  I guess most all of us. But then most of us aren’t out protesting either, only a small few who sometimes create huge damage to the property of others, the others all innocent of any overt crime. So who are these small few?  First there are those uneducated crass thug-like characters who just are looking for an opportunity to ‘go shopping’. They are never choosey about any opportunity to do their shopping. They don’t shop often, but every so often they need some new stuff of varied sorts. Then there are those blacks who are so rightfully upset about how so many blacks are living in such situations that no misbehavior by any black should ever really be prosecuted. And there are the whites who are also sympathetic to the conditions under which so many blacks live that they also believe any individual black who commits a crime should be excused based on their circumstance in life.  What do all these groups have in common?  Tunnel vision. They cannot see the forest for the sake of the trees. What exactly is the forest here?

1. Our society, as a whole, has a political and ethical responsibility to do everything we can to make the playing field more level for all citizens and especially all children. Instead we spend huge amounts of money on military matters engaging wars which haven’t won anything from Vietnam on with maybe the exception of Granada and the Balkans. These kind of winless wars have only succeeded in killing, directly or indirectly, millions of dispensable people and making people like Dick Cheney very wealthy war machine capitalists. 

2. We protect the buying power of the elderly by having social security rise with the cost of living. Fair enough. But we let the buying power of the minimum wage sink lower and lower with no protection. The federal minimum wage is now 25% lower counting inflation than in 1968. Why do we ethically protect the elderly and stick it to those earning the least amount of money via wages?  What kind of irrationality is it when we express, as parents, that we worry about the future for our own children, and yet finance our wars on borrowed money, ignore environmental protection, do nothing about responsible reproduction (does anyone really believe the world can handle another doubling of the human population as it has in my lifetime?), and provide good schools only for those children living in affluent communities? This list could go on for some length but that is not necessary to prove the point. What kind of Christian nation is saturated with people who only care about their own personal immediate needs. When someone says they oppose increasing the minimum wage what else can they really mean other than they don’t want to pay another 25 cents for a hamburger or hire somebody to mow their lawn at higher cost. What kind of ethics have we come to when those losing good pensions, good health care, good pay raises, respond positively to those politicians who propose giving them a paltry tax cut by taking away such ‘perks’ from those who still have them?  Whatever happened to the notion that the object was to ensure more and more people have good pensions, good health care, good salaries, etc. 

3. Somehow, the majority of people living in communities like Ferguson need to gather the strength and courage to take back the community from the hopeless thugs, regardless of whether these hopeless thugs are a product of our own national policies. The following URL admirably addresses this issue. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPUcA7yrErg

To put it bluntly: All this turmoil and emotional response to the killing of one person in Ferguson by the police is useless. No one can verify what kind of verbal exchange went down between the policeman and the guy walking in the street. The victim is dead, and the policeman, the victims companion, and the parents are all obviously bias. The facts uncovered in the grand jury make it clear the victim would not stop walking in the middle of the street, attempted to harm the policeman inside his car, at one point ran away, and then stopped and came back at the policeman. There were no shots in the back.So there was not enough evidence available to charge the policemen with a crime. 

Unless the issues 1, 2, and 3 above are addressed, it doesn’t much matter where the law comes down regarding the engagement of a cop with the citizen in the middle of the street. We could hang the cop and nothing would change except maybe establish that we are not obligated to obey reasonable police demands. We could make a hero out of the cop and not a thing would change for the citizens of Ferguson. 

We all need to accept that all of us, black or white, are not doing the kind of things we should be doing to make this country a better place for all to live. An ethical country never stops making he playing fields as level as we can so that all children have an opportunity to become responsible productive citizens. 

Doctor’s Without Borders, Ebola, and the Angels of Mercy

Doctor’s Without Borders, Ebola, and the Angels of Mercy

I recently attended a presentation by the President and some Field workers of Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Most people are probably aware that these medical personnel volunteer to practice their trade in the most unstable and dangerous areas of the globe. These kind of hot spots have become increasingly widespread in recent years. South Sudan has been the scene of senseless destruction for years, as has been Somalia, and today it is the Congo and Syria, and it just seems one could go on and on. Like most others, it is hard for me to even relate to these kind of environments. How do people live in situations like that?  I guess they often don’t very long before their life gets snuffed out. 

And yet there are doctors and other health personnel who travel to these places and try their best to save as many lives as possible under conditions which are appalling in terms of equipment, physical danger, health dangers, and extreme mental stress. “What”, I ask myself, “motivates them to undertake such a task in that kind of dangerous environment?” Many of these people get kidnapped, held hostage for years, get killed, go for long periods of time with hardly any sleep, and get burned out from stress so quickly that they often are rotated in and out every 6-8 weeks. Why would any sane person volunteer to do this?  What motivates them to do this? And if they need to be relieved every 6-8 weeks from all the stress, how do the native people survive all this stress year after year? They get no relief.

Doctor’s without Borders is a main recipient of grants from my own little charitable fund called FANAFI (Find A Need And Fill It). The grants are not huge but substantial, and enough that the organization wants to keep me interested. Every year they call and indicate the President of the Organization or some other high up administrator would like to meet me when they are in Chicago on such and such a date. I never say yes and simply indicate it is not necessary for me to meet anyone from the organization, that it is a waste of their time, I have nothing to offer them in terms of any expertise etc. They simply have more important things to do than entertain me. But twice now they have invited me to sit in on a presentation by some of their field workers. Now that interests me for the reasons already mentioned. As a people watcher, getting to observe them up close is appealing to me. What kind of persons are they?

The former one was held in a downtown Chicago skyscraper in some sort of Legal Corporation Boardroom. There were less then ten of us there, very limited, which caught me off guard.  This last one was in someone’s home and had maybe 60 people present. I no sooner got there, which is another story in itself, than it was cocktail hour and no one dislikes inane chit-shat more than myself. And it was crowded, and no one dislikes crowded babbling more than me.  A double whammy. I stepped out into an empty room deciding whether to force myself to mix or just hide until the presentation started. But some young gal snuck up on me from behind and said “Hi”. It turns out she was not a guest but one of the speakers, a field worker who had just gotten back from Sierra Leon. 

Lucky me, I now get a chance to probe her mind one on one. She grew up in Wisconsin, went to undergraduate school at Tulane down in Louisiana, and I forget where she did graduate work. I think her graduate degree is in Public Health, some sort of diagnostic degree. I am pretty sure she is not an MD. But that makes no difference in that she faced the same threats any health worker on the team would face. She had returned from Sierra Leon in late July after dealing with an Ebola outbreak, and was heading back in a few days. Most of the members of a medical team are nationals, not foreigners, and are trained by the foreigners. She had her own team and I think she was the only foreigner. At least in the slide show picture she was the only white person on the team. And the team was mostly young people. 

The other two field workers giving presentations were older, middle aged. So what stood out in common about these health saviors?  They certainly weren’t depressed or withdrawn or stupid. All were scheduled to go back and put themselves on the line again. While I have only seen a handful of the actual workers myself, they seem plain enough looking people, not at either extreme of the good-looking scale. They are clearly deeply moved by people in distress. Well, so am I, but I am not going to the Congo to get in the middle of it all. But they do.  Why?  They certainly don’t make a lot of money doing this. These ventures clearly give strong meaning to their lives, a sense of pride, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of importance—real importance, not the shallow Donald Trump kind of importance. What could make anyone feel more important than saving the lives of those with so little hope? These trapped and helpless people will die without the effort of these volunteers. I myself like to make a difference in other people’s lives but it has never been a question of life or death for myself. 

Many people would question, “Why bother?, These wretched souls have nothing to look forward to, they are destined to perish one way or another.” Not a bad point but a scary one. The world is becoming filled with more and more people who are destined to perish from neglect of various sorts.  Then again it is a perfect match— some of the least fortunate people get to live, and the workers get to feel contented and motivated by the help they give. I am reminded of what someone once said, “It is hard to dislike someone who likes you.  There’s your peace plan.”  And this is the core of an important truth. Until there is more widespread appreciation of diversity there can be no peace across the globe. I have taught in a high calibre University and in a State University located right smack in the middle of an urban ghetto. Both were challenging and interesting experiences. Yet teaching in the urban state university was more challenging and rewarding. At a quality university a Professor can speak gobbly gook and the students will learn, if not from the Professor, then from the book. Some of the brightest Professors are the worst lecturers, and usually least involved with students on an individual basis.  And this is ok, these are the Professors who will make significant advances in their field. At a low level urban State University the students are not affected by advances in any field of study, but seek the help and motivation to improve their own lives. In truth, the system has been rigged against them from the start, and without the help of the more fortunate in life, most of them will never go very far.

Doctors Without Borders never takes political sides. They treat whoever is wounded or sick regardless of what side they might be on in any civil war. One volunteer told us that in the Congo the medical camp had people from one side of the conflict on one side of the camp, and persons from the other side of the conflict on the opposite side of the camp. Since many of these conflicts are religious in nature we have two religious groups, trapped into coexistence via being sick or wounded, and chomping at the bit to get back to the killing. Perhaps they have little choice, there is some personal safety if one can be on the side doing the killing and some safety being in the armed group that is losing for the moment. It is the hapless villagers who have no security. In Afghanistan the people were so beaten down that they simply cooperated with whomever were the guys with the guns in control of the area at any given time. American soldiers often complained that the villagers were helping the enemy too much. Really?  Maybe these villagers didn’t live their lives inside some fortified “green zone.”  Sometimes neutrality doesn’t save the volunteers and they are forced to flee after some of the volunteers get killed or kidnapped. 

The volunteer I chatted with before the presentations told me that kids as young as 6 can be assigned a task of walking a day’s journey to catch up with a herd of cattle so an older child can be relieved to search for new grazing areas.  Since water is scarce the child may simply have a little tin of water to sip on until they find the cattle. I found this incredulous and asked now can a 6 year old child not get lost? Or be harmed?  She told me that the child knows enough to follow the footprints of the cattle. Hell, it is not uncommon in some American households for a child not to be very far out of sight of a parent until they graduate from high school and some offspring never do get out of sight of their parents until the parents die. What does all this mean for how a child’s mind develops? It seems either extreme is a disaster. Kids given poor environments as a child seem very likely to be hostile and non social as adults, and prone to violence against other people. Kids spoiled as children seem more likely to end up more withdrawn from others, have little appreciation for diversity, and adapt a family values mentality in which their only social circle are family members. When I taught it was always easy enough to spot the ‘spoiled brats’, the ones whose parents never let them have any independence or responsibility. They went through the motions of living but were rarely satisfied ‘campers’ and simply remained aloof from others most of  their life. 

Prior to these Civil Wars the youngsters led pretty happy lives even though they were working in the fields at such young ages. Poor but happy is an apt description. When we read books written by young refugees who trekked thousands of miles to reach refugee camps and later get sent abroad to live in more modern societies, they always seemed to have fond memories of life before the bombs came, their villages burned, and most family members raped and/or killed. Americans are aghast at how these people in these hot spot areas of the world treat each other, but seem rather immune to the life situation of the millions who live in our own ‘hot spot’ crime ridden urban, rural, and now suburban ghettoes. These kids are not out working in the fields at a young age but are trapped inside with bars on the windows and doors. When I was young the ghetto area streets and neighborhoods were always filled with people sitting on porches, kids riding bikes all over the place, ball games of some sort in the streets, and everybody knew everybody. Ride through these same streets today and not a soul will be seen except a few hustling to get back in their houses behind the bars on the windows and doors.

What does all this portend for the future with so many at home and abroad living lives of seemingly hopeless desperation? Thugs rule the roost in these situations, thugs with no kindness towards others as sort of pay back for no kindness received on their part from hardly anyone during their formative years. They emerge with a simple goal—to project an image in which no one better mess with them, and an attitude of ‘nobody has ever much liked me, and I now don’t much like anyone else.  Doctors Without Borders cannot heal this kind of affliction.  It is often in the eyes we can see the depth of someone’s pain. It is also in the eyes we can see the depth of someone’s happiness. Certain images tend to haunt me, and I wish she hadn’t told me about the 6 year old child all alone following footsteps of a couple of cows all day with a little tin of water for subsistence. Nothing can match the sorry image of a group of orphaned children trekking a thousand miles to reach a refugee camp. Nothing unnerves me more than looking into the eyes of an emaciated refugee on camera and see the vacant stare of approaching death. Some of these neglected children will survive and grow up, just as some of these neglected children in our own ghettoes will, and we are not often going to like the end product.

Humans are an advanced species, the only species with such advanced powers of comprehension. We suffer more than other species precisely because we understand the consequences of so many situations we find ourselves in. There are two pain pathways to our brains.  One pathway simply tells us what kind of pain, where, and to what extent. The other pathway triggers our emotional response to the pain. The pain threshold for various pain activators (usually destruction of body tissues) is quite similar for most all of us. What differs a lot is our emotional response to the pain, that second pathway of pain to the brain. Some of us get hysterical with a certain level of pain and others are rather stoic. Morphine and heroin are unique drugs in that they block the emotional aspects of pain. That is why patients in pain like morphine, and it is also why many people whose lives are unbearable to them sometimes gravitate to heroin use. It is often hopeless to convince someone whose life is such that living is emotionally painful to them, that they should stop using heroin. Under heroin they just don’t care so much about their life situation. That is exactly why many soldiers on a battle front will use heroin to handle the stress of the situation and when they come back home they no longer need, and therefore, no longer use heroin. That is exactly why patients in pain are allowed to administer whatever the dose of morphine needed to relieve their pain, and when they heal, they no longer need or want to stay on morphine. It only took 50 years for politicians and the public to understand that morphine/heroin are not addictive drugs in the absence of physical or emotional pain. Because these two drugs are natural to the body and we all produce our own endogenous opiates under certain conditions, they are not toxic to the body at all unless someone takes heroing/morphine along with a lot of a depressant like alcohol, in which cases respiration can be suppressed enough to kill the person. 

Humans are the only species with an advanced trait of ethics. Ethics is the only means, in a population with such diversity, where we can, via our ethical sense, level the playing fields in life so that more people can achieve some contentment in their lives. Because diversity is such an important component of God’s evolutionary process, there can never be level playing fields. The goal all of us have is to maximize contentment in our lives. Ethics only works if there is a reward for being ethical. Some people view the reward as a trip to Heaven. There is no real evidence to support this, but there is no way to disprove the existence of Heaven either. Ethics is two sided. It helps the less fortunate find some contentment in their lives and it enables the more fortunate in life to achieve some contentment in their lives. The truth is that most of the giving in our lives, at least for most of us, is to people that are not the least fortunate, and therefore not the most deserving of, or in need of, any gifts from us.  At some point in my life I saw the inaneness of all this and, with few exceptions put a halt to this frivolous and useless habit. Ethics means finding time in our lives to directly help the less fortunate, or use our excess wealth to support charities which do help the less fortunate. Our ethical potential, like any other inherited trait, varies. It is harder for some people to be ethical than others. But if real contentment in life is to be achieved, we all need to try hard to be ethical, because if we don’t achieve our potential in this trait, we are not going to ever be really contented. We will end up being a mini version of Donald Trump, or Sarah Palin, or Rush Lambaugh, etc. We cannot be ethical and not have tolerance for diversity in so far as the diversity in question has no impact adversely on others. 

My conclusion from observing these field workers is that they are really contented and vibrant individuals who have managed to maximize their ethical potential and are reaping contentment from their efforts. Naturally there are a lot of other ways to express ethical behavior without diving into the center of an Ebola epidemic.  But it is hard not to admire those who do just that.  I chatted with that young gal just a few days ago and now she is already back in the middle of chaos and risk, to her own well being and that of everyone around her. There are way too many dark clouds on the horizon for us to feel all is going to be well in the near future. So I resort to thinking in evolutionary time, not human time, and yes there is no reason to feel the process itself is in any trouble. Mother Nature bats last, and I sense she in now in the on-deck circle. Hold on to your hats, the near future could be a bumpy ride. 

Obama’s Place in History: Why Obama Became Unpopular

Obama’s Place in History: Why Obama Became Unpopular

It might seem surprising that a President with Obama’s personality and good will to just about every segment of society, should end up with so many who absolutely detest him. Amongst modern politicians it is rare to find someone who has so much empathy with the rich and poor, the religions of every ilk, every age group, every ethnic group, and rose so fast to almost cult status.  And yet more and more became angry with him. Why?

Basically Obama refuses to side with the self serving interests of any group, and that generates anger each time he does this. His focus always seems to be on doing the right thing ethically—not politically, and not via popularity. This is not to say his interpretation of ethics is always right. But he is someone who does not put down opponents with adjectives, but invariably sticks to a reasoned out defense of his own decisions. Endless insulting adjectives have yet to steer him off his own measured analysis of issues.  When it comes to insults he rarely, if ever, returns tit for tat (which invariably reminds me of the old wisecrack “If I give you a tat will you give me a tit?). 

Precisely because Obama relates so well to so many diverse groups he feels their pain, understands their plight, and tries hard to level the playing field so the maximum number of citizens can achieve some success and contentment with their lives. He clearly wants various groups to develop respect and tolerance for each other rather than focus so hard on protecting their own self-serving agendas.  Perhaps this is not surprising: he is a genuine mongrel himself.  

It takes a good person to do the right thing, and a strong person to do the right thing even at a personal cost. Obama may not be as widely popular as when he first became President because he actually has stood steadfast in his efforts to give those without rights the same rights others have, and  those without a level playing field a more level playing field.  When Obama stated it was an ethical obligation for a country, as rich as ours, to give all people  access to good health care, he carried through with Obama Care. While any overhaul as vast as this needs a lot of tweaking, he is the first President to establish that good health care is a legitimate function of government for all citizens. His place in history will be elevated on this basis. Obama has made it highly unlikely that universal good health for all citizens is going to go away. 

When Obama, through his personal support for the right of everyone to choose who they wish to marry, he helped give the correctness of this position a strong push, and made this act of justice become fact almost overnight. His place in history will be elevated on this basis. Groups, once gaining justice with their own rights, rarely lose them. It simply sticks. 

When Obama, out of nowhere, became the first black President, he accomplished something no one 10 years ago would have thought remotely possible for many years to come. His place in history will be elevated on this basis. He has probably buried forever the notion that blacks operate on some sort of different genetic parameters compared to other ethnic groups. Obama clearly appreciates human diversity. Some hate him precisely for that. 

Since Obama somehow managed to stop the economic depression created by Republican and Democratic policies for decades, his place in history will become elevated still further. 

When Obama gave support for measures which would help stem climate change and set America on the course for new forms of energy, he became virtually the first President to take these issues seriously. This will again elevate his place in history, unless climate change proves to be the fraud non climate scientist ‘experts’ of the Sarah Palin mentality so claim.  

When Obama firmly set out, as one of his goals, to fix a broken immigration system, he again became the first President in a long time to seriously address the issue. Through his goal of tightening border security, and letting those immigrants who have lived in this country for some time be put on the path to citizenship, he not only is doing the right thing, but putting a stop to a form of slave labor in this country—and this will again elevate his place in history. Slave labor is never justified under any circumstances, so whatever the resolution, those who work in this country, as individuals, deserve living wages. To what extent immigrants are allowed to stay in this country is another matter. 

When Obama stood strong that the the lowest paid jobs should receive living wages and pushed for the minimum wage to be raised to $10.10/hr he again raised his place in history. There is no humanitarian reason why some individuals in our society have to work two jobs to make a living, or why senior citizens have their purchasing power protected via cost of living increases, and those at low paying jobs do not have their purchasing power protected via cost of living increases. It hurts the economy to have millions of people with diminished purchasing power. If he succeeds in establishing this point, that also will elevate his place in history. 

Obama is the first President in a long time to put an end to endless wars that cannot be won. Limiting American involvement, in aiding other countries fighting internal terrorism, to non combat roles, is a huge change in American Foreign policy. Using paid American mercenaries to fight freedom battles via voluntary armies is an embarrassing abuse of our own citizens, especially when these kind of wars helped the Cheneyites of our country become quite wealthy. The average American family is not helped by defense budgets which dwarf our domestic needs. This reversal of policy by Obama will also help elevate his place in history.

Obama has correctly focused on our primary economic  shortcoming as the rapidly growing disparity between the very rich and everyone else. He has understood this situation, has addressed it as wrong, but for whatever reasons, he has been unable, or slow, to move forcefully on the problem. There is a lot of money behind the power to keep the system rigged in favor of the wealthy. In this area, what Obama genuinely seeks, is stuck in neutral. 

Rather than try to identify every positive policy Obama has championed to give everyone rights that others already have, and level the playing field for the less fortunate of our citizens, the above examples serve to elevate the point being made. And that point is this: With every one of the policy changes listed above, there will be some who will become irate. There are some who are not interested in fairness for all, but want to retain privileges for themselves at the expense of others, and these privileges have been long standing. Breaking cultural and economic barriers is not easy, and are rarely cheered at the time being implemented. It takes time for any pat on the back.

Perhaps his last two years as a lame duck President with a hostile Congress will put an end to further changes by Obama. History is likely to be kind to Obama but that is a difficult accomplishment to define. All of the above achievements are based on the realities of today. The future is determined by evolutionary time, not our current sense of time. None of the issues which are going to determine the future are being addressed by either political party. Human overpopulation, the major force behind all the problems now facing human societies everywhere, is not even on the table. Responsible reproduction is not even a topic of discussion, let alone acted on. Climate change is vaguely on the table but the human activities which are behind climate change have taken many decades to begin to have an impact and cannot be reversed quickly. In a global economy, no economic prosperity can be achieved for the masses of people without global minimum wages.  And no society, no matter the form of government, can avoid chaos with such a huge disparity between the wealth of a few and the wealth of the many. Neither party has gotten any handle on this yet. 

At any rate, it just seems that human overpopulation is destined to trigger yet another major evolutionary correction. We already have caused a major species extinction rate which is starting to rank up there with the 5 or 6 times this kind of extinction rate occurred in past evolutionary corrections. Climate change is about to follow. And let’s not forget that the kind of vicious and senseless violence pitting different groups of humans against others is going to spread as everyone begins to fight for survival. The trough size cannot appreciably grow, but the number of those trying to feed from the same trough is growing in an exponential fashion.  Humans do not have the intellect to really predict the future, and that being so, it may be meaningless to talk about how history will judge Obama. If the human species survives an evolutionary correction, only then can there be any historical judgement.

This past election was more like a brawl in a ghetto playground. The winners are left standing, but absolutely nothing has been solved.  And each side prepares diligently for the next brawl, as if who wins the brawl changes much about life in the ghetto. This is kind of a sad state of affairs.

Thus, if we are to be painfully honest, the immediate future for humanity looks very scary. The long term future for the evolutionary process looks right on track as it always has been. All any of us every got was the opportunity, by chance, to be a participant in the this process. Humans have an inherent ethical sense (the Golden Rule) and this has improved over time just as physical traits improve. There is no reason to fear that evolution is going to leave a sense of ethics behind. Evolutionary advancements of the major kind, are rarely lost, but after corrections, come back stronger than ever. 

Obama is more like Lincoln that any other President. Lincoln too, was figuratively crucified during his time as President. Only with hindsight did he rise to the level of appreciation he now receives. Secretary Steward once remarked, after watching Lincoln stand firm for the right, as best he understood the right, that “he (Lincoln) is the best of us (in the cabinet)”. Whenever a leader fights for what is best for all, his support goes down as more and more of those fighting for what is best for themselves become furious that the needs of those less fortunate are are being met via sacrifice from everyone. 

No More Super Bowls For Green Bay

No More Super Bowls For Green Bay

With Mike McCarthy given a contract extension until 2019, the Packer fans hope for another Super Bowl win or participation in a Super Bowl, went down the drain.  Since McCarthy came on board, the Packers have managed to be in 1 Super Bowl, yes that’s right, 1 SuperBowl which they won. Since they make the playoffs often maybe that is not bad EXCEPT this is the talent McCarthy has had at his disposal:

Aaron Rodgers

Brette Favre

Jordy Nelson

Clay Matthews,

Charles Woodsen

Donald Driver

Ryan Longwell

Sterling Sharpe

Randall Cobb

A.J. Hawk

Antonio Freeman

Mark Chmura

John Kuhn

Gilbert Brown

Greg Jennings

With the best quarterbacks in the league his entire time coaching the Packers, and plenty of talent at other positions, all McCarthy had to do is put on the field a defense which could at least play at the middle of the pack in the league. With Favre or Rodgers at the helm the Packers can beat most teams on that alone. Then add the talent listed above and the Packers should be routinely in the Super Bowl. Yet they managed it only once. 

Anyone who has ever watched Green Bay play any of the other top teams in the league has witnessed how badly the Packers get out-coached. The man stands on the sidelines and stares desperately at his chosen list of play calls. The Packers have one of the worst coaching staffs in the league, perhaps with an exception here and there. The best of players cannot make plays if they are not put in a position by the play calls to make a tackle, or catch the ball etc. The other good teams know almost exactly what McCarthy plans to do since he is the kind of coach who feels if you run standard plays and do them well, you win. That hasn’t been true for years. With all the gadgets at hand to design innovative play calls, the object these days is to outsmart your opponent with play calls that take advantage of the defense, or have a defensive scheme which thwarts the plays being called by the offense. 

The Packers will often make the playoffs on the basis of a Rodgers or Favre and the others named above, but in the end an incompetent coaching staff will doom them almost every time once in the playoffs. 

So, Packer fans, enjoy the individual talents of many players on your team, and learn to be satisfied getting often into the playoffs, but that is the most you can hope for as long as McCarthy coaches the team, and picks others on the coaching staff. With no expectations of going any further, learn to be sympathetically amused during playoff games as McCarthy stares in disbelief at his clipboard play calls and sweats profusely at why they are not working. He had scouted the teams so carefully and designed his plays with so much care, but the other team is not using play calls he expected and so he is stymied. He makes what changes he is capable of making, but he doesn’t seem to be a swift thinker or have the means at his disposal to make any significant changes during the game. 

McCarthy is a nice guy who tries exceptionally hard and is a perfect fit for the Packer Management, a good fit for the ‘good ole boys’ club which runs the Packers. The NFL likes to call the Packers a publicly owned football team, but like most everything done by the NFL, little is how they make it out to be. There is no segment of the public which has any control over Packer Management, no public official, no public voting by anyone on administrative personnel, useless stock certificates which have no power over anything, and so, in truth, the public has less say over the Green Bay Packers than the public has over other teams.  With the other teams, the owners are there to maximize their wealth. Winning increases profits a lot, so other owners would not put up with McCarthy for more than a couple of years and his ass would be gone. 

The Packers are like the Cubs, and maybe this is not a bad thing. Both fan bases will support the team no matter what, win or lose, and perhaps this is not such a bad thing. Loyalty, not winning, becomes King. That’s not so bad I guess either.  It is what it is.