Marriages

Marriages

I don’t know, as I start, what I will say about this topic, but it will be fun. First of all I don’t buy the common pitch by some clergy that “what God has put together……..”.  It sounds too much like a trick to upgrade themselves, since if God arranged the marriage He still needs the clergyman to make it official. No one comes to me to get the ‘real deal’ on God. I can understand that. My cat Sheebiejiebee knows as much personally about God as I do. I, like everyone else, know a lot about marriages, having seen many close up, and at a distance—a lot of them.  No, no, no, God certainly did not put together marriages. If so, and I was a judge, good luck trying to get me to dissolve what God put together. 

It is not really clear why clergy are involved, at least in most cases. In many cases if the bride or groom listed the 50 people who know them best, that clergy person would not be involved at all. If we all have a right to marry, then why is anyone else involved in making it official? I thought it was our right, not a right someone else decides we can have. “I, being of sound mind……”. Stop, I have yet to meet anyone of totally sound mind. Maybe, instead of clergy, a psychiatrist should ok a marriage. Just an idea. We can, of course, use a Justice of the Peace to make marriage official. Justice of the Peace?  I am not really sure what a Justice of the Peace even does. Is any judge a Justice of the Peace? Maybe so, but I suspect not. So who decides who is a Justice of the Peace, and on what basis? What kind of courses does one take to be a Justice of the Peace?

Many times someone will say “I can’t believe she/him chose him/her to marry, or he/her chose he/her to marry.” Well, it is not our place to say; every person is free to choose anyone they want to marry. What an absurdity that is. Just like we are not at all free to go into a car dealership and come out with a Cadillac. I have never been married. If I could marry anyone I wanted to marry I would have been married——many times. If one is appearance-challenged or personality-challenged—well, the only hope then is that that you have a lot of money or power or fame. Some people, I reckon, marry for the planned child support. Marry the right wealthy person, have a child, and you might get $40,000 a month for the next 18 years, and ole ugly-ass, after the divorce, is out of the picture. That’s not a marriage, that’s a career choice. 

Marriage is complicated. I can’t imagine how two religious purists could possibly marry unless both inherited the same religion. Otherwise, one way, or the other, any kids are going to some God’s hell. That’s real sad. Sex is simpler than marriage. Sex can be as simple as “your place or mine?”. If it is the wee hours of the morning and both are drunk, then sometimes the parking lot will do. Marriage requires a tad more planning—if I can use the term planning loosely. Planning the marriage is sometimes the most exhausting ordeal the couple will ever experience. And often the costliest aspect of the entire length of the marriage.  Just the cost of making ourselves and the entire wedding party an illusion of attractiveness can be a costly challenge. Sometimes we have to say, “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you on the street today, I had only seen you before at the wedding.” And what about grandma? At 92 she probably would spoil the heavenly beauty of any wedding pictures. One time, in a park for my walk, this huge wedding party was having their pictures taken in various groupings. I couldn’t resist standing at the end of the back row so I could be in one of the pics. Good luck trying to properly label that picture. At least my fly was zipped up. My Jerry Lewis smile probably stood out well enough. Someone once said to me, “Nothing about your behavior is always appropriate.” 

I really don’t enjoy most weddings. In fact, I don’t enjoy all that much any gathering where I will be chatting for hours with people I will never see again. It’s an attitude problem, a mental disorder of some sort. It is not smart at such gatherings to say anything in depth or controversial (my specialty), which of course could be on just about any topic, lest the whole festive affair end up in angry shouting matches or fisticuffs. Do I really care what someone I will never see again does for a living? No. Do I really care to expound on what I do for a living? No. Do I really care to know anything about kids who I have never seen, or at least will not see again? No. Fortunately, all my many cousins and uncles/aunts live a thousand miles away. The solution was evident enough—you can’t go to just some marriages, anniversaries, birthdays, engagements, and not others, so—to be fair—you go to nothing. If we think we will really be missed at these gala events, we are mistaken. I’ve seen the pictures, sometimes by the hundreds, of the gala event, and nobody is in tears over my absence. In fact most are smiling, perhaps precisely because I am not there. Give people what they want and they will smile every time. 

Weddings are obviously a most exciting and satisfying event for the lucky couple. The trouble is, tomorrow will come soon enough, and what to do for an encore? With time the wedding dress will be as wrinkled as her face and his stomach will dispel any illusion of handsome youthfulness. No longer will it be grandma who is ruining the beauty of wedding pictures. They say by age 50 everyone has the face they deserve. And some Donald Trump impersonator will make everyone take note of it.

Are marriages meant to last? That’s a tricky question. The only constant in life is change. We all know that. So marriage is essentially a gamble that both partners in marriage will change in ways which will strengthen the marriage, or at least let it hang together as some sort of convenient arrangement. There probably is nothing better than a good marriage and nothing worse than a bitter divorce. 

Being single is probably in the middle somewhere, as are most marriages. What can we really make of divorce rates? I suspect, if many people could really divorce and be able to attract someone of their dreams, divorce would be a lot more common. Most people in a marriage are well aware of their market value should they divorce. And if they are not aware, they rudely find out. “You don’t like to talk much? You are sexually over the hill? You are financially stable? Great, let’s get married.”  Older people often meet other older people who they enjoy being around, but going to bed with them? If someone never understood the connection between youth and sex, they sure will at that point in their lives. It is not so much the sex drive that goes as it is the opportunity to have sex with those who would make the sex appealing. There probably are exceptions-—God bless them. It is said that sex can be great in old age, but porn sites don’t seem to bear this out. I suppose if the lights are dim enough at least laughter will not be the predominant emotional achievement. Crying will be.

We are all aware that half the people who marry in the U.S. end up divorced, that people tend to marry at a later age, that fewer people ever get married. The notion of no marriage, no sex has fallen out of vogue. It is almost the opposite now in that many feel a couple better find out before marriage just how sexually compatible they are. With availability of sex more casual than ever, more people simply are leery of marriage. With job stability and financial security more elusive than ever, many people fear the financial cost of any failed marriage. Probably the endless internet and media gadgets ,with endless ‘friends’ on Facebook, chat rooms, twittering, etc make marriage less necessary. In the past a person could feel rather alone in the world without being married. Today, to put it bluntly, marriage as a social necessity is less important. Right and wrong in the marriage arena have given way to advantages vs disadvantages. Marriage has never been a clear cut well defined social institution. Now it is less well defined than ever. People are freer to define their own personal relationship with any ‘significant other’. When two people are living together today and one wants to get a message to one of the couple and can’t remember their name one is stumped: “Tell ______I will return the book I borrowed tomorrow. What goes in the blank? Use the wrong classification and one ends up embarrassed, like “that is not my fiancee, that is my boyfriend!” I suppose that is better than being told “That is not my boyfriend, that is my husband”. Maybe all couples need wear neck bands, the color of which clearly classifies their correct title. I make it very simple. I always answer to “Hey You”.   

Some say sex is God’s greatest gift to man, along with marriage. Does that mean God has many spouses and has sex twenty four hours a day? How would God find time to exempt me, via prayer, from the laws which govern the evolutionary process, if he is busy all the time Himself enjoying the ‘greatest’ gifts he has to give? How come God never looks upon the most sexually attractive, and snatches them up for his own catch?  What the hell does God look like anyway?  He must look like something. Who would want to have no physical appearance? That’s seems a tad creepy to me. Try to envision what God looks like. Good luck with that. Maybe those who God talks to know—like Jerry Faulwell, Mike Huckleberry, the Pope, and I can’t remember the others. My mother used to say I don’t listen to anyone, but I think, properly introduced, I would listen to God. I doubt God speaks in any human dialect, maybe just implants good thoughts in our brain. If so I hope in the next musing better thoughts about the topic get planted. 

Well, time enough for me to stop here. This is the longest musing which has shed the least light on the subject at hand. Ray Charles was blind and he still did not settle on a steady sex partner or be a loyal husband. That seems strange to me. “Ray, what’s the matter, don’t I appeal to you sexually anymore? What is it that you are looking for? I mean, damn it, you can’t even see anything.”  Ray Charles doesn’t even have to close his eyes to pretend during sex. Neither do drunks after closing time. It would take a porcupine for them to snap into reality.

I have to go now—go out hunting for a sexy young blind partner for sex and marriage. I will describe myself to them as best I can, and fibbing about age is a minor sin. Sounds like a perfect marriage to me—one of those ‘till death do we part’ ones, albeit not a long lasting marriage at my age. 

P.S. Marriages are usually very joyous, uplifting, and exciting events, both for the couple and their friends. But not always. In fact I participated in one of the strangest marriages since Tiny Tim married Vicky. When I was  graduate student at the Univ of Wisconsin, way back in the 60’s, a group of us, maybe 8 or so, would usually have dinner together in the student union. One night the place was crowded for some reason, and there were no large tables available, so two of us asked this older guy if we could sit at the same table he was at. He said ok and I don’t think participated in any conversation but laughed whenever we laughed. The next day, when our group was seated at a large table the same older guy asked if could sit at the table. He then remarked that he hated eating alone. His name was Gino and he was no problem at all. Rarely said anything, just laughed whenever we laughed. If we tried to bring him into a conversation by asking what he was up to these days he would just say ’Nothing, I just go to the movies by myself once in a while.” He worked at the Wisconsin Historical Society across the street. Of course after a couple of years or so all in the group graduated and we went our separate ways. Maybe 5- 10 years later, I can’t be precise here, the phone rings when I lived down in Chicago, many hours away from Madison, Wis. “This is Gino, you probably don’t remember me”. “Well, refresh my memory”. He did. “Ok, I remember you, how are you Gino.” “I need a favor bad.” A little birdie told me I better hang up. But I didn’t. “What kind of favor Gino?”  “ I am getting married and want you to come to the wedding” “Well, that is certainly nice of you Gino, but I am out of state now and nowhere near you anymore.”  “I know, but I need you to be the best man for the wedding.”“You must be joking Gino, I hardly know you”. “I remember one time you rented a row boat and took me out on Lake Mendota next to the cafeteria. I really enjoyed that.”  “Well, if I recall, that was to show you there are things you could do with your time besides go to a movie. I don’t think that elevates me to best man at your wedding.”  “I can’t think of anyone else, I am in a terrible spot here.” “Can you call me back in an hour Gino? I have someone here but we can talk then” “Ok”. Of course there was no one with me, but I was thunderstruck by the conversation. Gino getting married was amazing. And to have no one but me as a candidate for best man was really depressing. It made me feel very uncomfortable that anyone could be so friendless—-Another real picture from life’s other side. He called back. “Ok, Gino I will put this on my calendar and make it top priority. I will be very pleased to help you out here.” “The priest says there is a rehearsal the night before.” Ok, Gino get a piece of paper and write this down. I will be there for the wedding itself . Tell the priest to simplify my role and we will wing it. I think all I have to do is hand you the ring. I can’t stay for any reception, I need to get back home the same day. Things are busy for me down here. If the Priest encourages you to pick someone else don’t you dare say there is no one else to ask.  Don’t make that kind of comment to anyone. You pick the best man, not anyone else” So up I went and the guests were all her family and maybe a few of her friends. She was a good foot taller than Gino, who was short and rotund. After the wedding I went out to dinner with some friends I knew in Wisconsin. I didn’t want to be at the reception and have people pressing me about Gino. I barely knew the guy. That little venture on the lake was the total interaction with Gino outside of him sitting at the dinner table at the Student Union.

Maybe a year later I was in Madison and I think myself and a friend named Phil was along. We paid a visit to Gino up in the Historical Society. He had a desk in this huge but dungeon like room. “How’s married life Gino” “That didn’t work out, we are divorced.”  Before leaving I spotted the former wife at the other end of the room. “Should I say hello to her Gino?”  “No, we are not on speaking terms.” So many times in life I am reminded of Wordsworth’s words: 

           

             “For I have learned

      To look on nature, not as in the hour

      Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes                    

      The still, sad music of humanity”

I vowed to visit Gino, maybe take him to lunch, every time I was near Madison. Maybe get him out on a row boat again. Certainly I can spare the time to do something unselfish and kind to someone so alone in life. So not that long after I went into the bowels of the Wisconsin Historical Society again to say hi to Gino. “I am sorry, Gino is dead.” I wonder what happens to someone like that when they die? Probably no one to handle anything and the county must handle the matter. I mean “wow”—the highlight of his life is that someone took him out on Lake Mendota for a boat ride. Gino was not retarded, he had a college degree. I know, I am making the wrong case to win the argument here. As T.O. liked to say, “Fair is fair” and he would have done the same thing for Gino. In fact, in retrospect I blew it. I should of inquired whether he had someone to handle his estate to make sure any money went where it should go. I don’t recall he had any family at the wedding. Any money in a situation like that should go to a charity of his choosing. Obviously there was no one in his life who remotely was deserving of any inheritance. But somebody probably got the money. What a farce. Maybe there was no money. 

Further Pondering of Syrian Refugees

Further Pondering of Syrian Refugees

As issues to ponder, this Syrian Refugee debate is a dilly. Bill Maher had this to say recently:

““If you are in this religion, you probably do have values that are at odds. This is what liberals do not want to recognize. You may be from a country—as there are many, many Muslim countries—that either have Sharia law or want Sharia law. Those values are not our values.” 

It seems, in general, that a lot of Americans are frustrated with their own economic or personal life in various aspects, and feel their situation would be better if so many ‘immigrants’ were not ‘amongst us’. They are tired of  ‘other’ groups of almost any kind, competing against them for jobs, rights, and power—annoyed and whining about it when these groups protest any injustices. Every time some ‘group’, of most any kind, gets rights that others already have, that is seen as decreasing the quality of life for those who already have such rights, or have a better environment in which to live. Interestingly, the one group who came out of nowhere to achieve an equal right, was about the last group most anyone would have predicted to actually gain public support for them to get such a right. Perhaps sexual preferences is the one area where people feel less threatened by diversity. Which is not to say we do not still have others who are apoplectic about sexual diversity. 

But when it comes to ethnicity and religion, that is another story and, another festering time bomb. Bill Maher hits it on the head when he says, regarding the Muslim Religion, that “those are not our values”. It seems straight forward enough: If the Muslim Religion states that those who kill non Muslims get to go to Heaven and party with virgins, then this is beyond the pale to our values. And of course it is. It is about on par with the Christian Bible text which states if a man has sex with an animal, both the man AND THE ANIMAL must be killed. Or if a child disobeys a parent the child should be stoned. And on and on it goes in both religious scripts—Muslim and Christian. But one could protest “How many Christians really practice these absurd biblical commandments?” So it then becomes a numbers game. The real problem with the Muslim world is that violence becomes the answer to just about every conflict. We are wrestling with the same addiction in the U.S. where violence is way too often the preferred solution. ’Stand your ground and give tit for tat,” preferably a lot more tit. No,not that kind of tit. If some crazed foreign cabal kills 50 of us, we respond and kill hundreds of them, turn their community into ruble, and send millions scampering to refugee camps. And what has all this violence gained us or them?  More violence. When Obama tries to break the cycle of violence a lot of people call him weak. Most of these Trumpity warmongers would never themselves be caught within missile distance of these conflicts they endorse. Nor are they willing to themselves sacrifice financially for the battles they wish their country to engage in. This all seems a tad short of real bravery. 

Maher’s reasoning here is patently unfair to Syrian refugees.. Should anyone allow into their country those whose religion endorsed burning witches at the stake?  Or allowed racial hangings, or was one of the last stalwarts of slavery?  Ok, that’s history not the present. But then again, our ‘Christian’ country (even though our forefathers, including Washington and Jefferson adamantly stated we were not a ‘Christian’ country”). Back then separation of Church and State was a big deal. The colonies had about enough of ‘Puritan’ type governments in which non believers were persecuted. 

It is important to understand that while some strong Christians in this country had slaves or engaged in hangings the vast majority did not. That is the nature of all major religions. The adherents of each religion sort of pick and choose which parts of their scripture to believe and follow. It would be difficult to pretend we have a pure religion in which everyone talks and acts like Jesus. Hardly. When listening to the recent Republican debates no one would one think we were hearing advice from Jesus himself. Nothing could be further from the truth, and this example is by no means restricted to the Republicans. It only stands out because they are the ones who wrap themselves in fundamentalist religion the most. 

Let’s try this ‘culture’ thing in reverse. Let’ say Donald Trump becomes President and goes after all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons.  All these people, whether it be for the same reasons he goes after those he ‘debates’ against, or for cultural, religious, or ethnic reasons of various sorts—these people start rioting in the streets, and massive battles begin to occur across the country. Various groups, for various reasons, battle to gain political control of our country. Let’s say the local police lose control across the country, all kinds of residents flee the country and end up in refugee camps. Now let’s say Switzerland, a nice calm country, who I don’t think has ever bothered any other nation in history, agrees to accept 5000 of these American refugees, maybe you and I are among the refugees. 

I think it is a safe bet that many of the Swiss people would be irate. After all, we come from a country whose ‘values’ are different than in Switzerland. Americans have one of the highest murder rates per capita of any modern industrialized country. Not only that, but our country has invaded over 70 other countries since our inception as a country. In the last 20 years we have invaded 33 countries. We have bombed, invaded, or occupied 14 Muslim countries in 30 years. We have been at war 93% of time in our history. We are not, however the worst here—the British have invaded 90% of the world’s countries in it’s history. Real unemployment today in America is around 10%, while 43% don’t earn enough money to qualify for paying any federal income tax, etc. 

‘What kind of rabble razing rift raft are we being asked to allow in our nation of Switzerland? These are some kind of radical Christian fanatics.”  Of course you and I, if we were among the refugees, haven’t murdered anyone, we haven’t personally been the reason for all the attacks on other countries, we are not unemployed, we pay income tax, etc. But it would be to no avail, many in Switzerland would not want to have mercy on us. 

When any refugee anywhere is considered for sanctuary in another country it is only that particular person’s behavior which counts. That is why it takes 18 months to 3 years before a refugee is admitted to this country. Over this period of time past history, to the extent there is much, and their behavior since a refugee are the determining factors. Donald Trump no more represents the personal behavior and attitudes of everyone in this country than ‘killing infidels as a pathway to Heaven’ represents the life style of most Muslims.

This is not an easy path of reasoning to use since some will say, “If you don’t like it here in America, just leave.” Of course I do like it here in America or I would leave. I have no economic or family restraints. The things I don’t like about America are not really part of my ‘little world’.

Everyone deserves individual consideration when they apply for something. Aren’t stats important?  Yes they are, and as soon as there are any stats which support the notion that refugees have been known to commit terrorist acts against the country which accepts them, I will decide we better not accept refugees anymore. It is, in some sort of odd way, rather contradictory to be rabidly against ISIS and yet have so little mercy for those very people where ISIS activity resulted in their being refugees.

More and more people globally are now beginning to ignore organized religious sects. They don’t, for the most part wage war against them, nor do they lose any belief in God—they just seek ethics and justice elsewhere. The first question I would ask a prospective refugee is whether they try to live the Golden Rule. It just seems to me that to the extent we live our lives according to the Golden Rule, we qualify for any kind of heaven in any kind of major religion. In other words, if more American people just became GoldenRulites, we would have a better society—live our lives like Jesus lived his, not get so wrapped up in selected scripture, or concentrate on religious rituals, or require ornate glittering cathedrals to feel religious, or think we can sin as long as we go to confession, and think we are actually being ethical with family values—a mentality which clearly states it is alright to consider our own family or friend or nation etc. to be more important than others.  The Golden Rule does not state: ‘do unto your family, friends, and country as you would have them do unto you’. No one can, with a straight face, claim Jesus would ever approve of some kids having better schools than others by using property tax as the means to fund education, to let millions of people work jobs paying them less than living wages, to tolerate a economic system in which 2-5% of citizens are permitted to accumulate 90% of the wealth, or do not provide all citizens with good health care.

I like Obama’s approach to ISIS: Show mercy to the immediate victims. Demand that others play a major role in fighting against ISIS. Demand that Muslims, who suffer the most casualties from ISIS members, actually lead the battle against ISIS. That we will support all efforts to eliminate ISIS but we will not lead by ourselves and by doing so, make our citizens the major target of their terroristic attacks. McCain, the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Rumsfelds, and all the evangelicals want us to carry the ball virtually alone via essentially invading, turning country after country into ruble, then tire of it, declare victory, withdraw, and leave behind permanent chaos with various thug groups taking turns controlling differing neighborhoods. 

Above all we should not perpetuate violence as a means of solving conflict, with us doing all the violence and suppression——then declare that the victims of violence deserve no kindness. We certainly never said, that since Hitler and his henchmen created awful crimes against humanity, we would never allow any Germans, in dire need, to be granted asylum. The Golden Rule is always the best measure of ethical behavior.  “Hard to dislike those who like you, isn’t it?. There’s the beginning of a peace plan.”  Unknown  This is not to suggest we start liking ISIS. It does, however make clear that we would not make all blacks, for example, our enemy because some blacks do bad things. Of course we can substitute blacks with any other diverse group. We would do well to remember that ISIS can only thrive in countries where a vast number of people struggle in urban, suburban, or rural ghettoes, not too dissimilar from those found in many such American ghettoes. Most of us more affluent never really have much contact with these ghettoes—-we are purposely gated off from them, rarely, if ever, going anywhere near them.

There is nothing new here. If someone moves next door to us from a ghetto, we are edgy about it. Of course we are, we know what kind of people can be found in any ghetto. But of course maybe that is why these new neighbors moved to a better community. It is certainly unethical to pre judge anyone in the absence of any evidence. It is certainly unethical to feel no one should be allowed to escape from a ghetto. To be ethical will always involve risks. The least we can do is to be kind and get to know the new neighbors before we decide we don’t want them as neighbors. The same with refugees, we are obligated to get to know them better—like for 18 months to 3 years—before we let them move into our country. Hey, maybe before moving to a better neighborhood from a bad neighborhood it might be a good idea to have some scrutiny before the move is permitted. I think, given a choice, I would rather have a family of refugees living next door before some gangbanger from an American ghetto. I also think I am now done with this topic. Of course, in the back of my mind I can still hear my high school chemistry teacher, Harry Repp, saying to me “see what happens when you think.” He has a point, but I reckon it still best that we all keep on thinking.  Not feeling—but thinking. Thinking is always superior to feeling. 

Syrian Refugees——Yes or No?

Syrian Refugees——Yes or No?

The nature of global conflict has totally changed the last 40 years and this change has accelerated the last 15 years. Uniformed armies fighting on battlefields is essentially obsolete now, except for the most primitive of countries. The last war where armies on a battlefield decided anything was probably Korea. Of course we invaded Grenada and Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, against a Government army and these kind of wars were over in an afternoon. And when the dust settled, nothing was settled. Armed religious thugs vied for control over different areas of the defeated country and these conditions still exist. No wars are ever so vicious as religious wars. When God is on some groups side no brutality is too brutal when punishing God’s enemies. Sometimes both sides pray to the same God like Sunni vs Shiite, or Irish Catholics vs Protestant Catholics, or sometimes Church members exercise extreme cruelty on their own church members like Christians burning witches, Muslims stoning adulterers, and before that Christians quartering people alive on the village square. In Africa Muslims enjoy hacking Christians to death and Christians hack Muslims to death, both sides serving their God as intensely as they possibly can. Of course Muslims and Jews have been murdering each other before and after the United Nations carved out a Jewish State in the middle of a Muslim world. That strife has been going on for 60 years now despite Israel teaching them brutal lesson after brutal lesson.

Americans have militarily entered Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia. Lebanon, Afghanistan and several South American countries the past 60 years, and exactly where above are any successes? Let’s just leave Granada out of it. That conflict was just too silly and inane to take seriously.  Now we have the newest and most violent war, of recent times, in Syria. It is essentially the ‘Mother’ of all religious conflicts involving Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, and ISIS, mixed in with all kinds of combatants rushing to join in from dozens of other countries, including the U.S. None of these combatants are in uniform. Caught in the middle of this are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions for all I know, innocent people trapped in the cross fire from all the bedlam. Most citizens have been forced to flee, but nobody wants them in their country either. 

The truth is, the United States has it’s handful with it’s own soldiers returning from these new kind of wars, needing professional help from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. A soldier on the front line in these kind of wars is under extreme stress round the clock. The enemy could be just about anybody, the land mines could be just about anywhere, snipers could be off in any of the shadowy hidden areas, and suicide bombers or chemical warfare a possibility at any time. The mental consequences of fighting in the middle of this bedlam, or having a family caught up in it, is beyond the pale for many people. In Afghanistan, for the past few years, more American soldiers have committed suicide than have been killed in battle. Why would we want to continue to send troops into these kind of religious conflicts? Obama is to be commended for reducing this sort of thing to a trickle. Let those who want to teach somebody a lesson in the Middle East, or elsewhere, get together and go do it on their own. Stop using our own young people as mercenaries and then doing it on borrowed money.

Why do so many Americans favor sending troops and using our military might to teach all sides a lasting lesson? The answer to this is simple: We no longer have a draft so what personal risk or sacrifice do those wanting America to send in troops risk? I have lived through at least a half dozen invasions by America into these situations and frankly, I never had to make any sacrifice personally at all. When I see surviving veterans of these kind of wars I don’t feel gratitude, but anger that my country actually sends our own young people into wars of this kind. It is personal with me. I vigorously supported the War in Vietnam, excused from the draft because as a graduate student I was deemed too valuable and got a deferment. 35,000 young Americans died for what? The only heroes in that war were the draft dodgers who had the courage to refuse to slaughter distant people for no good reason. Our soldiers were victims too—of our own government. Since that war, all our subsequent invasions, have been fought with borrowed money. My own financial portfolio prospered from all kinds of tax breaks, tax shelters, tax cuts, and just endless federal dollars to make my upper middle class life as financially easy as possible. The most rampant American addiction for wealth becomes 'enough is never enough'. 

So here we are again, another religious war going on, again in the Middle East. Most seem to feel we need to teach all of them a lesson they will never forget. This mentality has been tried over and over again for 60 years, with no real victory having ever been achieved. Which of these invaded countries is better off after our invasion than before?  Vietnam is, but then that conflict was not religious based. Plus they defeated us, as rightfully they deserved to have defeated us.

With this background we face the decision as to whether we should accept any Syrian refugees into our country. We live more and more in an age of ‘feelings” without quality logic or any proper data base. Few of us have time anymore for any patient study of any serious issues. Modern electronic gadgets have created endless inane babble where everyone, off the top of their head, in endless gadget conversations, expresses how they feel about issues. The depth of much thought today is summed up by ’Somebody Sucks’. If pressed to be more explanatory they often revert immediately to “I don’t want to talk about it further’. This Syrian refugee question is no different. It doesn’t take most people 15 seconds of thought to have an immediate answer as to how they ‘feel’ about this issue. 

So, I being human too, start with several feelings. First I really don’t feel anyone should be granted citizenship in this country if they can’t speak English—for their own good. We all know some really nice people in low level jobs who will never get any better job because they can’t speak much English. Hell, a person can learn English through all sorts of head phone tapes and TV courses, etc. They don’t even have to go to class.  I also don’t feel any more of our young people should be sent into religious conflicts anywhere. Religious behavior is a personal choice and if people in some country insist using that personal choice as a basis for killing each other or making second class citizens out of others—on what basis do we have a right to tell citizens in other countries what kind of religious behavior they can exhibit, and even if we had such a right how does anyone change someone else’s religious behavior? What percentage of the time does this ever happen? Not very often. 

My own ethical basis for my best behavior is based on the simple Principle of the Golden Rule.  So was the ethics of Abraham Lincoln and endless other great leaders, including Barack Obama. His popularity often dips when he actually practices that principle, and groups we really feel we don’t like start to get privileges and rights most of us have had for a long time. It is very threatening to us personally that we need share justice with others. “What do you mean set the minimum wage at a living wage level?  That means I have to pay more for a hamburger, and a lot of other things.” I guess it is the older people who need to have social security rise with the cost of living so the power of their dollar can keep pace with the cost of living. But the young people? They are just the future, our own offspring—let them work two jobs or live with their parents or get used to having 38 different jobs in their lifetime since more and more jobs go to contract instead of secure full time jobs, where downsizing becomes an annual business tool, where job security gives way to the bottom line pressure to save costs by firing the well paid and hiring a young person at a much lower wage. And if there are not enough jobs available, well, we can just let the overflow become paid mercenaries to go over to the Middle East and teach these people a real lesson.

At any rate there appears to be two legitimate concerns here: First these refugees are legitimate tragedies—innocent people caught up in religious hatred and power hungry thugs. It is unethical to simply turn our backs on people with needs. There is also the question of just how dangerous is it for us to admit 10,000 or 65,000 Syrian refugees? We certainly are not obligated to allow people into this country who will commit acts of terrorism against us. Daily terrorist attacks have become almost a daily occurrence across the globe. Who is committing these terrorist attacks? The answer here is very unnerving. Often they are people with mental or emotional problems. Most of the terrorists actions in our country have been committed by these kind of people. Then we have assassins trained by groups to commit acts of terrorism across the globe. For any logical and rationale decision about Syrian refugees we need to know what percentage of terrorism acts across the globe have been committed by refugees from refugee camps? “According to the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, of the 3 million refugees admitted to the US since 1975 (785,000 since 9/11), roughly a dozen have been arrested or removed due to security concerns.”  That really is low. And I am not aware of any terrorist attacks in this country ever having been committed by any of these 750,000 refugees. Why is this not surprising?  A family loses their home and all their belongings, is granted entrance into another country and then is going to pull off a terrorist attack as a thank you?  That seems almost absurd. 

Let’s now get away from feelings and absurdities and be more practical here. The average time wait to process a refugee request for asylum in this country takes a year to 18 months and is often 3 years. So let’s say you are a foreigner and for whatever reason, you want to get into the United States to engage in a terrorist attack. You are going to go and live in a refugee camp for 1-3 years on the ‘chance’ the U.S. might be the country to accept you?  Of course not, one thing terrorists rarely have is that kind of patience. There are many others ways to get into any other country faster. Sneak across the border, not withstanding that Carnival barker Trump is going to make Mexico pay for a huge wall across the border. Making anybody do anything is getting harder and harder with modern forms of conflict. It would be more realistic to wonder how many countries in the world would have anything more to do with the U.S. if Trump were President? Of course just the idea of the U.S. taking a sledgehammer and knocking others over the head with it is certainly appealing, even to me. Feelings can often generate stupid ideas. People can marry to get into other countries, they can have a skill needed and be granted some sort of green card immediately, one can attend college in another country, and the list goes on and on. That is the reality. If one wants to get into another country many potential terrorists can. Here is another reality. If some group wants to recruit a terrorist to commit a terrorist act in our country it is probably easier to find a long time American citizen to do it, than fiddling around trying to get somebody from another country to do it. 

“So here are some statistics for those interested. Let’s start with Europe. Want to guess what percent of the terrorist attacks there were committed by Muslims over the past five years? Wrong. That is, unless you said less than 2 percent.  An FBI study looking at terrorism committed on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 found that 94 percent of the terror attacks were committed by non-Muslims. In actuality, 42 percent of terror attacks were carried out by Latino-related groups, followed by 24 percent perpetrated by extreme left-wing actors. And as a 2014 study by University of North Carolina found, since the 9/11 attacks, Muslim-linked terrorism has claimed the lives of 37 Americans. In that same time period, more than 190,000 Americans were murdered (PDF). In fact in 2013, it was actually more likely Americans would be killed by a toddler than a terrorist. In that year, three Americans were killed in the Boston Marathon bombing. How many people did toddlers kill in 2013? Five, all by accidentallyshooting a gun.” Clearly the risk of a Syrian refugee from a refugee camp committing a terrorist attack is extremely remote. 

But that doesn’t mean we need admit them willy nilly either. A waiting period is great, even if just to prevent this process from being used by someone wanting to get into our country and commit a terrorist act.  After that we need to make the process success oriented. For example, maybe they are conditionally admitted for 1 or two years, and if they don’t learn adequate ability to speak English they are then deported. After all, we want people admitted to succeed not languish dirt poor ostracized from American society as so many now are. 

Frankly, we probably need worry more about the 43% of American citizens who do not make enough money to qualify to pay federal income tax. And we need worry more about the 2-5% of Americans who own like 90% of our wealth and still want more. If we can’t find a way to pay all or most American workers a living wage, find a way to protect benefits, pensions, and good health care for everyone, then from this group will arise the next wave of terrorists. In ain’t gonna be the Syrian refugees committing terrorist acts. 

And let’s stop listening to idiots. Trump suggests we designate a safe zone in Syria for the refugees. Syria is a small country. There is no place anywhere in Syria today which is a safe zone or will there ever be one till the conflict ends. What we really need in modern American society is for people to stop letting their immediate feelings about issues generate their final opinion. We all start with feelings, but on important issues we need use logic and data to formulate our final opinion. This is hard to do anymore with major issues so complicated, everyone on gadgets to be amused or engaged in endless inane babble—to the point our information overload is mostly junk input. Answers to this problem are elusive. And at some point in modern times we all need to accept that violence breeds violence. We certainly have proved that over the last 60 years. 

P.S. Of course I prefer no Syrian refugees living next door to me. Then again, given a choice, I probably prefer about 90% of people not live next door to me. Unfortunately, fair is fair, the Golden Rule is the ethics here, so others too, have to endure having me as a neighbor. 

Lincoln Boyhood Memorial Home—Thoughts About His early life

Lincoln Boyhood Memorial Home—Thoughts About His early life

After three trip cancellations this year at the last minute, via my typical aging spirit of ‘the hell with it’, I managed to plan and actually carry out a trip. It was only a day trip, and not one which many others would spend the money to go on. Of all the people I have admired and studied to death, Abraham Lincoln is the one whose interest on my part never wanes. His understanding of human nature, his analytical skills, and his background all have attracted more books about him than any other figure in history outside of Jesus. 

I have been to the reconstructed New Salem village where he spent several years of his early twenties, have been to Springfield to see his home there, his law office there, his burial site under 35 feet of concrete (twice thieves tried to steal the body), the Lincoln Monument in Washington, D.C., and the Lincoln Museum in Springfield. That, plus having read hundreds of books about Lincoln myself, hardly makes me a Lincoln scholar, albeit probably pegs me not too far behind.

I have always wanted to visit the place where he grew up from age 7 to age 18. His formative years took place at the southern tip of Indiana in a one room cabin with 8 other inhabitants. His father owned a 100 acres there in southern Indiana, not rich fertile acreage, but rocky poor soil, surrounded by wilderness and inclement weather. Owning that much land was hardly a sign of wealth back then. Hell, the government would give you a 160 acres if you would just go live on it. 

On paper this forlorn wilderness would seem a terrible place for anyone’s formative years. Once on the site, where his 1 room cabin has been reconstructed and his mother’s gravestone located, one cannot wander far from this confined area or one will lose the physical reality of it all. Except for the small area for the cabin, a couple of small sheds for chickens, tools, and small pastures for the cows everything else is pure woods. Still, Lincoln had fond memories of his childhood—a Childhood which had not a single material thing of substance. His bed was some leaves up in a loft. His clothes were homemade from animal skins although he may have had a single weaved shirt. No electricity, no running water, no means of transportation except walking and on horse, and he never owned a horse until considerable time after he left home as soon as his dad had resettled in Illinois. Even then, when he needed a horse to ride the judicial circuit as a lawyer, he couldn’t keep up the payments and a kind gentlemen bought the horse and gave it to Lincoln. He left home with nothing but the clothes on his back. What a miserable existence his formative years must have been. Except it wasn’t. Those who have read much of anything I write are well aware of my postulation that The Golden Rule brings contentment, and only the Golden Rule can bring a contentment which is not of a momentary significance. Lincoln saw and felt the pain of others, animals or people, and always made the effort to help them with their needs. He was deeply in debt most of his life, mostly because he did things for others who could not afford to pay. On the other hand, he was welcomed anywhere, might stay with one family for days, and even if not, they always fed him. He was, I guess, like a lovable stray dog. I guess we might say he was the ultimate nice guy, and a brilliant nice guy, an eminently trustworthy nice guy.

The average lifespan of Americans back in Lincoln’s youth was less than 40 years of age. Death was not mostly confined to the elderly, but happened all the time to younger people. The first son of Lincoln’s mother (Nancy Lincoln) died in infancy. Lincoln was but nine years old when his mother died. She died from ‘milk sickness’—a toxin gotten from cow milk or meat. Today the toxin is easily neutralized. His grandfather was killed by Indians. His sister Sarah died when Lincoln was 17 years of age. His Dad returned to Kentucky and a year later arrived back with a new wife, now Lincoln’s stepmother (Sarah Bush Lincoln), plus a stepbrother, and two step sisters. and a cousin of his mother (Dennis Hanks). This made a total of 7 people living in a one room cabin.  A main trail for settlers moving west went by near their cabin, and Lincoln was often ‘rented out’ to do chores for others in the neighborhood.

It is hard to say what motivated Lincoln to learn to read and search out books, books being something hard to find in his environment. He had less than a year of formal schooling. Aside from reading books, Lincoln liked to tell stories, and seemed intrigued by the thoughts and feelings of others. Early on Lincoln seemed to have adopted the Golden Rule as his ethical bent. His family was active in church yet Lincoln never joined a church, but often practiced repeating sermons he heard to others, if they would listen. Lincoln was well versed in the Bible, and when asked later in life why he never joined a church he replied: “When any church will inscribe over its alter, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior’s condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself,’ that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.”  Past that Lincoln was turned off by sectarianism. Somewhere in the mix of his childhood Lincoln became the person who would rise to eminence in one of the most difficult periods of American History. 

The Lincoln boyhood home is really in the middle of nowhere, even today. If one was going to do or see anything besides his home cabin and his mother’s graveyard, it is hard to imagine what would be of any interest for many miles around. There is a visitor’s center staffed at this time of year by one state trooper. The cabin and sheds are all locked up. In the summer they are staffed by ‘period’ people dressed in clothes of that era. But the time of year was perfect for me. I simply enjoyed being the only  person wandering around, sitting on a tree stump lost in thoughts about how this environment could generate someone like Lincoln. I thought about how many times a parent has showered their kids with every material thing imaginable so that their children could have a better childhood then they did. There is, I guess, good reason for the term ‘brat’. Of course how much environment or genetics plays in creating a ‘brat’ is still hard to decipher. Parenting is a real challenge.

I encountered only one person while there. He came from a family whose ancestors lived there when Lincoln did and so he had a lot of stories passed down from them. They were interesting stories, but I was on a limited time schedule since I had to get back to Kentucky for the late flight back to Chicago.  He mentioned that Lincoln suffered times of deep depression with no drugs to treat it. This is a common notion about Lincoln. So I gave the gentleman my condensed explanation of depression. There is normal depression—-depression by situations which normally do make a person depressed, and abnormal depression—depression caused not by external events, but by abnormal brain chemistry. Abnormal depression requires drugs to relieve it. Normal depression does not. All of Lincoln’s depressive states were of the normal variety: After all, he lost his mother, his sister, 3 of his 4 sons, an early love, a wife drove mentally ill by the pressures of the War and the death of a son, and throughout his life was face to face with those less fortunate, not to mention being President during the most devastating war our country ever waged. So of course he had endless occasions to be depressed. And yet, never, not once, was he unable to function, to make sound daily decisions that required the keenest intellect to make. Why would anyone expect a person facing all the tragedies that he faced in life, to be a happy-go-lucky warrior in life and not be worn down by the depth of all the problems? 

Actually, Lincoln was one of the most contented figures in history. He had learned, in his formative years, to “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to our duty as we understand it” (His words). Right, to Lincoln, was not some sort of inherited religious beliefs, selectively followed, as a trip to Heaven. Lincoln’s ‘right’ was based on keen insight into human nature, and a need for justice to prevail for all concerned. His mind could switch from obliviousness to others around him, to melancholy, to mirth and laughter, to bawdry jokes, to sadness, to reflective anecdotes, but never unkindness to others. If he could not help, he at least would not be unkind. To do, what in his mind was the right thing, generated his underlying contentment. Personal contentment does not make anyone immune from sadness, from bad luck, from failures or any other external events in life. 

I found his mother’s grave and the one room cabin and the recreated pastures. Lincoln himself went back to his boyhood home twenty years after having left for Illinois and wrote a poem about his visit:

My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-tones that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.

At any rate, from his formative years Lincoln grew to be the person, so intriguing to so many people, that all these books have been written about him. I thought to myself, wandering out there in a nondescript wilderness, “so this is the environment which molded the mind of Lincoln.” When he left to be on his own at age 21, with nothing to show for his formative years, this is clearly misleading: for Lincoln’s mindset was uniquely prepared for the challenges he would soon enough face. 

So what, I pondered, did his formative environment contribute to his successful life? Clearly he was blessed with a loaded genetic hand, all of which was unearned, just the luck of the dice. He was genetically endowed with physical size and strength, important in a rural frontier environment; he had a strong curiosity about everything around him, and he had a mind which was very logical and deliberate in it’s contemplations—-a mind, which once arriving at a conclusion, was a conclusion retained like being riveted in stone. He was not so much a fast thinker, but a logical thinker, with the patience to stick with a search for an answer until he had a solid data base. Lincoln, out there in the wilderness, had no endless means of amusement except that which he could generate with his own thoughts about everything and everyone around him. There were no electronic gadgets so that he could spend all day communicating with others similar to his own comfortable mental state about anything. He was surrounded his entire formative years on a daily basis by people who were very diverse. He didn’t inherit any religious, political, or cultural biases. There were no glittering cathedrals, no fancy schools, no real cultural traditions to follow. There was endless boredom, with his only option to educate himself about life, with Mother Nature as his school. There were no real forces at work in his formative years to indoctrinate him about major matters of life. He saw the power of words to influence others via itinerate preachers, he understood the value of books to provide a basis for sound conclusions about many things in life. Both his stepmother and father were basically illiterate.

Later in life Lincoln showed particular affection for his step-mother Sarah Bush Lincoln. Lincoln’s desire in life was to be somebody of note, and he never pretended otherwise to anyone. It was never centered around personal acquisition of material things, money, or power. He actually saw and felt the   “still sad music” (Wordsworth) of humanity. “The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.” (Lucretius)  Lincoln once said that “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother”. Lincoln kept personal problems and matters to himself, so his personal thoughts about his youth are not available from him in any depth. Sarah Bush Lincoln was quoted in later years as having stated, when first arriving at the Lincoln cabin in Indiana, that the children “needed to be "dressed...up" to look "more human." Sarah Lincoln was illiterate but supported his constant interest in reading against his father’s desire that Lincoln not waste his time so much on books. She later in life said: “Abe never gave me a cross word or look and never refused in fact, or even in appearance, to do anything I requested him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life…his mind and mine—what little I had—seemed to move together—move in the same channel….Abe was the best boy I ever saw or ever expect to see.” 

At 18, Lincoln helped his dad and family move to Illinois, helped him clear land for a cabin, get some crops started, and then simply left home with nothing but the clothes on his back. When his father was dying and asked to see Lincoln, Lincoln demurred, writing to him “that if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant”. He did not go to the funeral. Speculation has abounded as to why Lincoln would refuse to see his father one last time or go to the funeral. Since Lincoln never confided in anyone about personal matters it remains speculative. Many times during his life, Lincoln bailed out his parents with financial aid, even when Lincoln was in debt himself. So Lincoln was not heartless about his dad but seemed to feel they (step brothers, cousins) were reckless, lazy, and irresponsible. Having left the frontier life to go in a different direction on his own, Lincoln seemed determined not to get bogged down in a life he had long ago walked away from. While Lincoln made yearly trips to visit his stepmother and dad, his wife never went with him or ever met any of the Lincoln ‘clan’. There is only speculation as to whether this was more Lincoln’s decision or Mary’s. 

He early on adopted the ‘Golden Rule’ as his ethical mantra in life. He never adopted material wealth as any kind of addiction in life. His mind was so busy absorbing insights about all aspects of life that he never formed any intimate relationships except maybe one person while in his twenties and his wife. His inquisitiveness, his memory, his logic, his endless empathy with the less fortunate, his independence, and his obsession with ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ were all acquired out there in the wilderness of southern Indiana. By the age of 21 the essentials of Lincoln were already in place. His understanding of human nature coupled with his ‘charity’ towards all, would place him center stage in the epic American struggle with human rights and equal justice for all. Interestingly, he understood he would be killed for his zeal in these areas, and related this belief at least a half dozen times during his Presidency. If his assassination shocked so many others, this too was something Lincoln saw as his fate for his efforts. As he did so well himself, he advised all Americans that “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” Right, to Lincoln, was not any adherence to religious dogma, cultural traditions, self serving advantages, but individual freedom and justice for all. He was never part of a cabal of any sort, but notably apart from such limited perspectives on life. He saw the whole picture, and arrived at end points, not by any rigid criteria of the moment, but he would bend this way and that way en-route to the desired end result. He was, among so many other things, a master of manipulation to achieve fairness and justice for all. When hard line abolitionists pleaded with the President to move faster toward liberating slaves, he responded that he was only going to move so fast as he could bring the people with him, that they should continue to do what they were doing to abolish slavery, that when the time was right he reckoned he would put his foot down hard enough to attain success. It really was the ‘genius’ of Lincoln which finally allowed slavery to be ended. Of course, with time, someone else would have ended slavery—it was doomed for self destruction——but it ended when it did through the manipulative abilities of Abraham Lincoln. 

That forlorn and primitive environment out there in southern Indiana may well have been the perfect environment for Lincoln’s mind to develop as it did. He was in a position to see reality in the absence of preconceived barriers of any sort. His stepmother was illiterate but supportive, his father fully concentrated on physical labor, and his self induced ethical values and perception of others tended to make Lincoln everyone’s friend. 

His law partner said this:

“Mr. Lincoln was a "very sensitive man...a diffident man, somewhat, and a sensitive one and both of these added to his oddity, an awkwardness, etc....Lincoln had confidence, full and complete confidence in himself, self-thoughtful, self-helping, and self-supporting, relying on no man." Herndon wrote “Mr. Lincoln was a kind tender, and sympathetic man, feeling deeply in the presence of suffering, pain, wrong, or oppression in any shape; he was the very essence and substance of truth; and was of unbounded veracity, had unlimited integrity, always telling the exact truth, and always doing the honest thing at all times and under all circumstances. He was just to men, he loved the right, the good, and true, with all his soul. I was with Mr. Lincoln for about twenty-five years, and I can truthfully say I never knew him to do a wrong thing, never knew him to do a mean thing, never knew him to do any little dirty trick. He was always noble. In his nature he felt noble and acted nobly. I never knew so true a man, so good a one, so just a one, so incorrupted and incorruptible a one. He was a patriot and loved his country well, and died for it. Mr. Lincoln expressed his great feelings in this thoughts, and his great thoughts in his feelings; he lived in his thoughts, and thought in his feelings. By these his soul was elevated and purified for his work. His work was the highest and grandest religion, noble duty nobly done. Mr. Lincoln was cool and calm under the most trying circumstances; he had unbounded charity for all men." 

Herndon wrote: "He was the most secretive- reticent - shut-mouthed man that ever lived." Mr. Lincoln did consult with his friends - but he didn't necessarily take their advice, help their clients, or give them the jobs they wanted.

"Notwithstanding Lincoln's geniality he was a lonely man; for there was a remoteness and innate dignity about him that kept acquaintances at arm's length. Most people addressed him as 'Mr. Lincoln' or 'Lincoln,'" wrote historian Benjamin Thomas.

"Mr. Lincoln never had a confidant, and therefore never unbosomed himself to others. He never spoke of his trials to me or, so far as I knew, to any of his friends. It was a great burden to carry, but he bore it sadly enough and without a murmur.”

In his biography of Mr. Lincoln, Herndon wrote: "In general terms his life was cold  at least characterized by what many persons would deem great indifference. He had, however, a strong latent capacity to love: but the object must first come in the guise of a principle, next it must be right and true, then it was lovely in his sight. He loved humanity when it was oppressed as an abstract love as against the concrete love centred in an individual. He rarely used terms of endearment, and yet he was proverbially tender and gentle. He gave the key-note to his own character when he said: 'With malice towards none, with charity for all.' In proportion to his want of deep, intense love he had not hate and bore no malice. His charity for an imperfect man was as broad as his devotion to principle was enduring."

Judge David Davis's frustration in his relationship with the President is reflected in a statement he made in 1866: "Lincoln was a peculiar man," said Davis. He never "asked my advice about anything - never took my advice....he asked no man advice - took, no mans advice." Davis said "He had no faith in any mans judgement. Davis said “Mr. Lincoln was the most "reticent" and "secretive" man that he knew. Davis' close friend, Leonard Swett, seemed chagrined by Mr. Lincoln's lack of reliance on his friends judgment. "From the commencement of his life to its close, I have sometimes doubted whether he ever asked anybody's advice about anything. He would listen to everybody; he would hear everybody, but he never asked for opinions.

It was a long day, and my age showed a bit, but it filled my need to walk the same ground as Lincoln did when he was young. Funny, how with age, it is the simple things that bring the most contentment. Each day I try to learn a little bit more about this thing called life, not for any particular purpose, except understanding leaves one a little more mellow about life, more humbled, more sympathetically attuned to the problems of others, and a lot less irritable about the daily nuances of life and bothersome others. I don’t know how many read this sort of musing, but I do know this is a safer musing to send out than a musing on “Sexual Diversity”. No ruffled feathers with this one. 

Sexual Diversity

Sexual Diversity

I suspect most of us, including myself, would rather not deal with sexual diversity, and the greater the diversity, the less we want to address it. There is so little rational about varied sexual orientations and sexual acts, with so much feeling involved, that we only manage to make fools out of ourselves trying to be rational.  This country, and the rest of the world, is now going through a transition where everyone is forced to at least accept the existence of gays, but what kind of existence becomes heated. Actually, the sexual lives of heterosexual couples also varies beyond comprehension. If we go to a ‘straight’ porn site there are probably 30 categories of sexual activities we can choose from. If we go to a ‘gay’ porn site their are probably an equal number of categories of sexual activities to choose from. Now really, how can one be rational about all this?  With sexual acts, if that is what turns you on, that is what turns you on. Why it turns you on is unexplainable. Good luck explaining to someone why you have a foot fetish. Suddenly I wonder if it is just male feet or female feet which turn into a fetish. Some people don’t find sex of any kind all that appealing—messy and unpleasant. If they want children I guess they ‘close their eyes, spread their legs, and think of England”—or some such noble thoughts they do like to think about.  

I reckon most people, at some point, envy most other animals: when the hormones appear, animals have sex, in a prescribed, usually quick fashion, and it is over. They can then get on with their lives. They don’t have to think about it, it is a programmed behavior. Of course, we humans are ‘advanced’, bring the cerebral cortex into the process, and just like that, all this diversity appears, encapsulated in all kinds of emotional feelings at varied levels making human sexual activities a genuine three ring circus. There are seldom serious social discussions about particular sex acts simply because what facts are there to discuss? What religious prophet ever discussed, for example, oral sex?  The latest studies in the U.S. show  “among women aged 18-19, 58.5% reported that they had performed oral sex on a male partner in the previous year and 58.0% reported that they had received it from a male partner during the same time period.” Exactly how could there be any logical or factual debate over this practice?  I never see it on the menu in a restaurant where most oral ingestion occurs. When is the last time someone discussed an exciting oral sex adventure the next day with you? Sex acts are something we want to do (or at least one of the partners wants to do), but explaining why we want to do a particular sex act is pure feeling, not rational thought. Good luck having a masochist rationally explain needing pain to provide ‘good sex’. I don’t think masochists ever get beheaded by ISIS. No one seems to die with an erection.

Essentially we are reduced to throwing up our hands and mostly concluding “well, as long as it is consensual between adults ‘I don’t care what a couple does as long as they don’t do it in the streets and scare the horses’.” Of course we talk about sex a lot: via endless jokes and those who get caught doing some sort of ‘kinky’ sex or having any kind of sex with someone else’s spouse or significant other. How many people have their life ruined because of sexual adventures they simply can’t control? It’s really tragic, at least to them. What would drive a well known public figure to pay a prostitute $5000 an hour for sex? Or a priest to start molesting children? Or a famous athlete to send pictures of his private part to women he is not dating (or even dating for that matter)?  Emotions override common sense in these cases, even those with normally a lot of common sense. 

Now that societies are beginning to think gays can be allowed to openly exist, and even marry each other, we look forward to a period of calm. Then, ready to willingly or begrudgingly adjust to all this—BAM, an Olympic Champion male swimmer decides he is a female and starts dressing up like a sexy female. Is this ok? Is there anything which is not ok when it comes to consensual sex or what gender we can say we are? When we try to figure out answers, at best, we often end up with: “There ain’t no answers. There ain’t going to be any answers. There never has been any answers. That’s the Answer.” And at worst, it is often an adamant certainty: “Over my dead body, this is outrageous, God is furious.” My sense is that if God is furious, then I don’t wish to get in the way, or snatch away His choice of punishment. 

If someone has a foot fetish, or swings from a chandelier while having anal sex, at least it is out of sight—well, maybe for now, until American Idol is replaced on TV by American Sex Olympics. But transgenders are not out of sight. Then again, in all my years of teaching college students I don’t recall ever having had a transgender in class. Perhaps I just didn’t know.  Actually, I can’t recall ever having had a personal conversation with a transgender. For me, if someone is not hurting others by their behavior I tend to think they should be whatever they really are. I have enough trouble dealing with my own realities and feelings, so ‘live and let live’ pretty much governs my judgement of other peoples sex lives.  

Then this week, suddenly there is this turmoil about whether a transgender boy who identifies himself as a female, can use the girls bathroom in a high school. The school says no, the government says yes. And I say ‘enough already’. Clearly a lot of girls are not going to like that. Then I happened to read the following article and once again, I found a need to rethink the whole thing. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was on the same page with sex stuff?  Loving someone is hard enough without having to turn ourselves into a pretzel to make the match sexually compatible. Maybe evolution took a wrong turn. It would be easier if we could fall in love with someone, and love really be perfect if our love made them fall in love with us, and then——poof, when the hormones periodically kicked in, we would then have prescribed sex with no variation. No one would be filing for divorce over sexual incompatibility. Hormones would be in control. That would certainly solve debates about infidelity. “Why are you late getting home?” Well, I was standing next to Robert Redford on the train when his hormones kicked in”  

The following article helped me come to some sort of conclusion:

http://www.refinery29.com/2015/10/95887/jodie-patterson

The article got me to focus on the child, not me and my feelings. If half these transgender kids commit suicide, that doesn’t seem good at all. I guess, if we can’t correct who somebody is, and if they are good citizens, then we all, collectively, have the obligation to make life easier for them. That is the Golden Rule, and that is the Christian way also. There are many people, for example, who really don’t feel comfortable in public showers, and for differing reasons. We always need to separate nudity from sexual behaviors and personal hang-ups. Nudity, per se, is not sexual. I suppose, if airlines required everyone to sit in the plane nude most of us, not centerfold material, would be unhappy. The days of kids being protected from nude pictures or videos of the opposite sex are long gone. And really, going to a public bathroom is not really up-in-our faces nudity or anything sexual. What do we really think is going to happen if this transgender girl, in that high school, is allowed to use the girl’s bathroom? My guess is that most young people will deal with it very quickly, and those that don’t, need some counseling as to why they are so upset. Live, and let live, is something worth striving for in our formative years. It just makes the world a better place for everyone. Feelings too often produce mountains out of molehills. Once I read this article and there was a particular person focused, my mindset changed. No one in their right mind would ever wish to be a boy with a girls body or a girl with a boy’s body. Such people obviously exist and I, for one, would not wish to make their life any more difficult than it is. There is something really good about love, one person for another, in the various ways love can manifest itself. The mother in this article appears to be a very loving mother and is handling a difficult situation well. Why should any of us want to make a difficult situation harder? Diversity is a fact of God’s evolutionary process. Whenever we have difficulty accepting this, in these situations where no one else is being hurt by someone’s uniqueness, then we are the ones who need help. Why the hell would I want to make some fellow classmates life more difficult without a good reason for doing so? When my feelings are making life difficult for someone else, who is a good citizen and bothering no one else, then I reckon I need to adjust my feelings. Fair is fair. Sexual minorities are feeling on a roll now, and what possibly could be next?  Maybe there is someone out there with a penis and a vagina. Now what public bathroom do they use? I’m a semi hermit, let the rest of you figure it all out. I suspect Penelope might change his name in a few years. Too much like a boy named Sue. Maybe Penington. 

P.S. I no sooner got through writing this but the news hit that some Colorado High School cancelled the last football game because the police are investigating a student contest in which the winner has collected the most nude pictures of classmates. The article said so far hundreds of students are involved. It kind of makes the anger over a single student with a sex identity problem gaining access to the bathroom of his choice a bit silly. Maybe today we don’t even need separate bathrooms and certainly not solid walls, but windows to make the lighting right for the nude photos. Huh? Perhaps if normal sex-identity students no longer care that much about nude photos of themselves being collected, my generation shouldn’t care either. EXCEPT: this is certainly predatory on the ugly since here is a contest they would be ashamed to participate in, and their photo probably worth the most money for the grossness of it all. I always opposed letting students casually hug each other in hallways between classes as a greeting. Not because I am at all offended by it since I would rather see students hug each other than shoot or knife each other, BUT, once again, the less attractive students have to walk down the hallway with no one hugging them. It is like with every change of classes there is an instant replay of the popularity totem pole. Now that I am older I cringe when thinking of certain girls back in my youth totally ostracized because of their looks. I don’t know how they ever made it through the school day. Teachers hesitated to ever call on them for the callous, even if muffled, belittling noises generated. Kids can be mindlessly cruel, and we should never miss a chance to make them appreciate diversity, and the need for all kids to gain some respect, even when different in harmless enough ways. 

I sure hope this nude picture contest doesn’t spread to older citizens. Everyone would be afraid to open Grandma’s photo Christmas card. But at least all my acquaintances would be thankfully delighted that I don’t even send Christmas cards. I did once get a photo Christmas card where a friend had his head up his ass. Of course I could not be certain it was him with the head buried. My uncle got one too and complained that it wasn’t very Christmascy. Who the hell would send out such a Christmas card to others? Never mind, best for me to close the book on the origin of  such a tasteless act. Someone once claimed I could write a serious essay and then turn it on a dime into nonsense. That is true since, on most serious topics, after all is said and done, with more said than done, humor is a necessity to preserve our sanity. Perhaps God’s evolutionary process created humor to help us survive this experience called life. I do laugh a lot, not always appropriately, and hardest at my own jokes, but then again—I am still alive, albeit some say miraculously.  I kind of suspect that when I stop laughing, death will follow rather quickly.