Patriotism

Patriotism

I really struggle to know what this term means. Does it mean “my country, right or wrong”?  If so this seems so Hitleridic that why would anyone see value in that?  It is not clear how patriotism helps create a peaceful and just world. Every country has patriotism, whatever it really means, and that being the case, what is special about patriotism?  Patriotism and religious fervor often go hand in hand. Other times they clash fiercely. When I was young we had to stand every day and pledge allegiance to our country. Hitler was the best at this sort of thing and look what that led to. 

Like most people, I reckon, I don’t ever spend any time reciting the pledge of allegiance or humming/singing the national anthem. My own personal pledge of allegiance is to the universally acknowledged ethical principle called the Golden Rule. And the more my country, our President, or our people in general practice this, I am filled with pride about my nation. The more our current President tweets the more I begin to wonder whether there is any single admirable personal trait embodied in his being. Here is a man who inherited a lot of money, stiffed contractors and investors to make even more millions, has a ‘trophy’ family of some sort, declared bankruptcy multiple times—each time amassing more millions of wealth, has been elected President of his country, has immense power over others, and he seems angry round the clock, even at 3 AM in the morning, about everything and everybody, disrespecting friend and foe at every chance he gets. 

Many good people have stepped up to protest this endless assault, mostly on those least able to defend themselves, but he attacks his own ‘friends’, if I can use that term very loosely(he doesn’t seem to have any long time friends), but one I liked the most is the following one.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-sports-anchor-dale-hansen-162028451.html  

Shoot Me!

Shoot Me!

Football and other major sports around the world have been replaced by a sport far more popular and for reasons similar to the popularity of boxing. This new sport is not a complicated sport at all, it doesn’t last for a long drawn out season, it doesn’t take much athletic ability, there are no lingering debates about who won, and the winner gets the ultimate visual success of seeing their opponent lying prone, no rematch, and all the anger of the moment is relieved as the contest has a genuine finality to it. Your opponent, so definitely, is now a permanent loser. No rematch, the triumph is final. 

It’s not a civilized sport, requires only the mentality of a rabid dog, but the legality of it can be tricky. And even more attractive, we get to pick our opponent—but sometimes beating one opponent will not be sufficient to make our victory a media bonanza. While we can still make it a personal contest and pick out someone we despise, this will hardly make headlines. On the other hand, if we kill people at random, enough of them, and in the most outrageous way, sometimes making sure the least innocent of anything pay the price, then the rage inside us will be relieved the most, or it may be a ticket to Heaven. Most times there is no plan of escape; after the victory, you just want that ultimate moment of revenge, and then expect to be dead shortly, which means—finally, nothing else can ever aggravate you again. Some take heroin to alleviate the agony, but terrorists, if they die after their ‘dirty deed’ have a more permanent alleviation with their death. 

In a world increasingly over populated, with more and more people living in dire poverty or sensing a dead end at every turn, with endless internet bombardment of information that keeps our blood boiling chronically day and night, it may become hard to remain emotionally under control. We know very well how some people live, here or far away, and we can’t accept how well they live and how poorly we exist. Sometimes we are so into our religious allegiance to an inherited religion of God’s chosen people, that it seems we need do God’s will and get rid of our perceived heathens. To die doing God’s will seems the right thing to do for the inherited God we love so well. God will be grateful. We helped Him out. We go to Heaven, virgins or no virgins. 

Anyone can play this new sport. No endless training, no trying out for a team, no needing an athletic field or court to play on, no set rules, no set time or place required for the big game, just find the moment when you are emotionally strong enough to actually do it. Chances are you do not have many friends, so it is not like you lose in this category; chances are you are mentally or emotionally unstable and this torment needs to end; enough of whatever is enough. If this is what life is about then at least some larger number of victims need to pay the price for the hell in which you feel trapped. So you become a terrorist and seek the endless number of places and ways you can become one. Certainly most anyone can find a group gathering of those you despise and just take a wrong turn and plow right into them with your car or truck. Or if you want to really shock with your anger, just find kids in a school, or people in a theatre, or at nightclub, and so on, to massacre as many as you can in the limited time you have before all these intense feelings are permanently ended via your own death. This is not a complicated sport. 

But maybe you really want to play the sport, but not really die as a consequence. There are people out there you don’t like—maybe their race, maybe their religion, maybe their culture, maybe their politics, maybe their affluence, maybe they are ghetto trash—whatever. You don’t want to die, you just wouldn’t mind if they died. That means you have to set it up, wait until the right opportunity. Most of us, with due patience, can find a situation in which we feel threatened by the kind of person we don’t have any use for. Finally, at last, we can stand our ground and kill them legally. As icing on the cake, all those who are like that person will be angry as hell but you have the law on your side. Tough, everyone has a right to defend themselves, and in America we use that right for more now than in other countries. We mostly lead the way in murders per capita, at least among the more civilized countries. 

I wouldn’t want to be a policeman. Those raised like animals in ghetto like environments often, after years of such formative years environment, behave like animals, and it would be tough dealing with them day after day, night after night. Policemen have an advantage, and have for years. When I was young everybody knew the Chief of Police would shoot you if you misbehaved in his presence, not so much like if you were white, but if you were not white some policemen found an ego trip by treating minorities unfairly. That was kind of a well known sport back then. Not too many ran from the police in the old days, as they would sure as hell shoot you.  Today this kind of thing has become a two way sport. Now both sides fear each other and this sport is growing in popularity. It doesn’t take a great effort to understand that both sides have reasonable reason to dislike the other. It is kind of useless to say “well most policemen are good policemen” or “most blacks, hispanics, poor people, and so on are good people”  

To wrap this up: Legalized murder is on the rise now and rising at an exponential rate. Terrorism is on the rise and rising at an exponential rate. Politicians can talk tough, and do, about how they are going to teach the bad guys a lesson, but they more and more have less and less control over these new sports of terrorism and legalized murder. So, as is often the case, we have no real vision on where this carnage will lead. I don’t think I will try. 

This musing was initiated by a mentally and emotionally disturbed student, who should, of course, have had access to mental health supervision, but this was left to the student and his parents. In a wide open space a mentally disturbed student (a normal student would not behave this way) slowly walks a considerable distance toward a group of police despite the fact the police have told him/her to put the knife down, and repeatedly/calmly tells the police to “shoot me”. There are ways to disable the student via chemical means, a prolonged standoff so the proper experts can talk the student out of his mental quirks, or they could shoot him/her in the leg or whatever, but to simply shoot him/her in the heart may be legal, and I suppose, shooting to death those mentally or emotionally ill, may be more humane than not providing them medical help for their mental/emotional problems. So we all take our pick, feel the way we feel, and no matter, these new popular global sports will grow in popularity, and if eventually bombs start getting thrown around as some sort of grand finale then maybe that will be nature’s way of dealing with human overpopulation.

We obviously cannot enforce responsible reproduction on ourselves, so Mother nature will deal with it, and she always wins, but often not without huge carnage and sometimes that carnage takes thousands of years before the evolutionary process continues forward.  Probably more and more people feel ‘something is about to give’—like in a marriage gone bad, but if so, there is not much we can do about it ourselves or collectively either—too many things, for too long, have made us, ready or not, like it or not, behave like lemmings, and continue a daily rush to the edge of some evolutionary cliff which will end one age and begin another, while only Time stays—WE go over the cliff and into an unknown darkness, just as all individual members of every species have done since the beginning of Time. Tomorrow still has a future, Time wins, we lose, but in the end—fair is fair since death eliminates the possibility of anyone dead worrying about anything till the end of time, if there is any end to time. No one needs a helium tank, or to jump off a bridge, just grab a table knife, walk slowly toward a group of policemen, repeating “shoot me” and one of them no doubt will. In the absence of adequate medical help for a mental condition, this is more a mercy killing, and no matter what anyone else feels about the event, the victim is free from his/her demons.  Just some sooner than others. None of us will get out of this world alive.  Amen.

The Future of Farming

The Future of Farming

The following information made me think of a childhood friend who always wanted to be a farmer, out in the middle of nowhere, far from the ‘rat race’. He is a farmer of sorts with a 100 acre tree farm. He has lot’s of equipment—half of it dissembled to be fixed at an undetermined future date—woodpiles all over the place to heat the house in the winter, and paths through the house which separate the path walker from all these ‘valuable’ nostalgic items from which he just can’t be parted. 

It seems farming for the future will look nothing like he envisions farming. Indoor farms are the wave of the future and some already exist. The goal is to get food from the farm to the table in hours rather than days or weeks. Huh? “Stop the world I want to get off’.  All this rampant technology bearing down from every direction is making me dizzy. Maybe I better start looking at caskets—if they are still being used. I guess it is more like “What to do with the ashes?”. Before long I reckon they will be put into recycled DNA machines and an hour after death will be the new model of the deceased, an improved advanced model making the recycled baby more like everything we want someone to be. 

At any rate there is an indoor farm that already exists in the S.F. Bay area.  “The growing room looks like a strange forest, with pink and purple LEDs illuminating 20 ft foot tall towers of leafy vegetables that stretch as far as you can see.  It smells like a forest, too, but there’s no damp earth or moss. The plants are growing sideways out of the columns, which bloom with Celtic crunch lettuce, red oak kale, sweet summer basil, and 15 other heirloom munchables.  The 50,000 square foot room, a little more than an acre, can produce some 2 million pounds of lettuce a year.

Step closer to the veggie columns, and you’ll spot one of the roughly 7,5000 inflated cameras or 35,000 sensors hidden among the leaves.  The sensors monitor the room’s temperature, humidity, and level of carbon dioxide, while the cameras record the plants’ growing phases. The data streams to botanists and artificial intelligence experts, who regularly tweak the environment to increase the farm’s productivity and enhance the food’s taste. Step even closer to the produce, and you may see a ladybug or two. They’re there to eat any pests that somehow make it past the cleaning room. ‘They work for free so we don’t have to eat pesticides” says Matt Barnard, chief executive officer. “

The world’s supply of fruits and vegetables falls 22% short of global nutritional needs so this indoor farming can help out although if the world’s population doubles as it has in my lifetime, maybe humans will be next door hanging on a coat rack waiting for their infusion of all these good nutrients from the growing room. 

This setup doesn’t use any soil. Instead nutrients and water are fed into the top of the poles and gravity does much of the rest of the work. Any excess water gets recycled back, so things are very efficient. The LED lights, air composition, humidity, and nutrition are regulated by all the sensors and cameras. The owners of this indoor farm have just received a $200 million dollar investment from a Japanese firm and this will help put one of their indoor farms in every major metro area with more than 1 million residents. Each facility will be the twice the size of the facility in the Bay area. And can be constructed in under 30 days. 

Humans certainly have evolved into technical geniuses. The problem is that while we have made progress with our social recognition of diversity and human rights, we have an inability to comprehend the bigger picture. We know overpopulation is disastrous from Biology 101, but we cannot bring ourselves to enforce responsible reproduction. We can force ourselves to be responsible drivers, but not reproduce responsibly. We allow world religious sects to continue to promote endless wars (massacres a more descriptive term), yet we still use inherited or adopted marriage religions instead of the Golden Rule as our ethical mantra; we still tolerate 2-5% of a population to own 90% of the wealth; we still have many people who detest diversity instead of embracing it as one of the key factors in the evolutionary process; we let feeling instead of science dictate whether we make every effort to prevent climate change, and we still have no clinics available to those who suffer from varied addictions and compulsive behaviors, even though we know addictive/compulsive behaviors can never lead to contentment, and the list goes on. Our species has enough brilliance, but way too little ability to see the big pictures of life. 

So I will tell my friend to go ahead and be a farmer—sell your land, walk away from all that equipment dealing with soil, move to a major city, sit your ass at a nice computer desk and stare at the monitor all day in case you need to deal with a computer glitch, or man the phone in case someone in the middle of the city needs fresh produce for dinner that night. Besides, if all the farmers move into the city for their indoor farms, that leaves more natural landscape for someone like me who likes to wander in nature as a hobby. Leave an old couch out in the yard since for sure at my age now, I need to rest a lot during my wanderings. He no doubt is still filled with inner rage since as a child I ran over his play fencing and John Deere tractor with my Bell Telephone truck. I still have that toy truck sitting on a shelf in my living room. Nostalgia is a necessary component of being older. Gratitude and the good ole days help the terminational days to be contented. Personally, I don’t particularly want to see this indoor farm. If it has a sledge hammer I might put the sledge hammer to good use. 

Proud to be White

Proud to be White

The following interesting article was sent to me recently which provided the basis for the musing which follows the article. 

SAD, BUT VERY TRUE. THINK ABOUT IT BEFORE YOU REACT.

Subject: Proud to be white. I have been wondering about why Whites are racists, and no other race is... Proud to be White Michael Richards makes his point...

Michael Richards better known as Kramer from TVs' Seinfeld does make a good point. This was his defense speech in court after making racial comments in his comedy act. In it he raised a few interesting points...

Someone finally said it. But how many are actually paying attention to this?

There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, etc. And then there are just Americans... You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction.

You call me 'White boy', 'Cracker', 'Honkey', 'Whitey', 'Caveman'... And that's OK...

But when I call you Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink... You call me a racist.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you...
So why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live in?

You have the United Negro College Fund.
You have Martin Luther King Day.
You have Black History Month.
You have Cesar Chavez Day.
You have Yom Hashoah.
You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi.
You have the NAACP.
You have BET...

Imagine if we had WET (White Entertainment Television)... we'd be racists.

If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.

If we had White History Month, we'd be racists.

If we had any organization for whites only to 'advance' OUR lives, we'd be racists.
We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce.
Wonder who pays for that???

A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant, but any color can be in the Miss America pageant.
If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships... You know we'd be racists.

There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US ...
Yet if there were 'White colleges', that would be a racist college.

In the Million Men March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists.

You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us.
But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.
I am proud... But you call me a racist.

Why is it that only whites can be racists???
There is nothing improper about this e-mail...
But let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on.
I sadly don't think many will.

That's why we have LOST most of OUR RIGHTS in this country.
We won't stand up for ourselves!

BE PROUD TO BE WHITE!

It's not a crime YET... But getting very close!

End of sent article

Musing About the Topic

The article is interesting but I think misleading and avoids the issue of each ethnic group trying to be “proud” of something which by definition implies they are the superior ethnic group. If there are admirable personal traits/personalities which are possessed by all those in a particular group then I guess that group can be proud of themselves. I have taught an endless number of students of every ethnic background and I have not found any admirable human trait to be found only in certain ethnic groups.  Personally, I am only proud of things which are the result of my own efforts and goals. Many things about us just are. White, black, or brownish just are. Tall or short just is. Ugly or handsome just is, etc. Mischievousness sets in when we start being proud of these sorts of things. Patriotism and religious allegiance fits in here as well. I was just born in this country. I inherited a certain religion. It is hard to see where pride fits in too well in all these areas. As I matured I no longer felt obligated to any particular religious belief, or felt white was a better color, or felt right or wrong, my country was always right. Religious, racial, and patriotic furor simply lead to conflict and wars. I don’t even like national anthems being used by politicians at sport events. This ‘my country right or wrong’ is not a healthy mindset for any country. Hitler was most effective with this mentality and look where that led to—massive destruction in Germany and all over the globe. Look at all the wars of the most vicious kind generated by religious conflicts.  It is still going on and sometimes it is just between two different sects of the same religion. But all this as it may be, let’s look at the article in question here. 

From this point I think we need ask ourselves, if we are white in this country,  would we rather be of any other ethnic group? Most will certainly say no.  My opinion here is that we would only find any significant number (in our country) of differing ethnic people who might say “I’d rather be white”. In general anywhere across the globe being in the majority is the most comfortable fit. Next come those societies in which the minorities are in small numbers. Usually very little friction there, the majority does not feel threatened. The real problem comes when a minority is a considerable percentage of the population in that country. America is unique in that we have sizable numbers of several ethnic minorities which then as a group becomes threatening to the majority white population. This alone creates tension. 

The rest of the article to me, is misleading. I really can’t remember when anyone called me “white boy”, “cracker” etc. Maybe that is because I don’t recall calling anyone Nigger, Kike, , etc. I can’t even quickly think of any derogatory nicknames because it just doesn’t seem there is any need for me to do so.

All this insulting stuff comes from media ‘entertainment’—including movies, internet chat rooms, responses to articles on the internet, etc. It is the media which fosters most of this name calling. In fact, it is certainly rare, and I wander around a lot, to hear any of that name calling in public interactions. For one thing, it would be almost a sure way to find oneself verbally or physically attacked.

As far as the comment about the ghettoes being a dangerous place to live in, this is hardly a comment on ethnicity as much as it is the economic status of ghettoes. White ghetto areas are as dangerous per capita as minority ghettoes, but there are far more minority ghettoes. It need be remembered that every government is responsible for all the communities within it. Environment plays a huge role in how children in their formative years end up. I wonder what kind of person I would be to today if I had grown up in a ghetto of any sort. Since I caught just about every childhood disease, and medical care being what it is in ghettoes, I guess I would have just died young. 

As far as named days go, the truth is, if we look it up, just about every day seems to have some groups day attached to it like Secretaries day, etc.  Below is just a list of what the first 4 days in Sept are named for:

September 1st

• National Food Bank Day – First Friday in September *
• National Chicken Boy Day
• National No Rhyme (Nor Reason) Day
• National Lazy Mom’s Day – First Friday in September

September 2nd

• National Blueberry Popsicle Day
• National V-J Day
• National Tailgating Day – First Saturday in September
• National College Colors Day – Changes Annually

September 3rd

• National Welsh Rarebit Day
• U.S. Bowling League Day

September 4th

• National Wildlife Day
• National Newspaper Carrier Day
• National Macadamia Nut Day
• Labor Day – First Monday in September

If there are not a lot of White this or White that events or days this is typical of the majority race in any country. Only minorities feel the pressure to signify days or events for themselves. For example, if one belongs to some sort of ethnic race which only comprises 10% of the population, you might want to have an artistic painting contest for just members of that race. It is natural when most of the people around you are not of your ethnic background, to seek events or whatever when people of that group can gather together. Remember, most Americans are Christians so why do we have to have dozens of different Christian Sects?  There is no law stating there cannot be a White Pride Day or White History Month, but until recently whites were in such a great majority that it would have seemed ridiculous.  All the advantages that go to any majority eliminate the need for such things.

What is happening is that the white majority is shrinking and this naturally is resented by the white population just as religious fundamentalists greatly resent that all denominations are suffering huge reductions in membership. 

It is understandable when white blue collar workers find jobs disappearing en masse as computers and machines take over work they used to do, while at the same time minority groups are gaining more access to all kinds of jobs, that much of the anger will be directed at  those competing for the fewer jobs available. 

There are no statistics which demonstrate minorities are getting a greater share of the better paying jobs in our country based on the percentage of their minority in the population. We could have a White Chamber of Commerce but what white wants to do that? Most every active member in the Chamber of Commerces across the country are heavily white, certainly far greater than their percentage in their community. 

Anytime in a democracy where majority rules, minorities need protection. It is human nature. That is why we have a court system to protect the rights of any minority. There are whites who attend black colleges, they cannot be denied admission by law. But most whites view black colleges as low level colleges (they probably are) and would rather attend a school where most of the students are white. 

As far as marching for rights, what rights are there which are being denied to whites?  People tend to march for rights others have which they do not, or opportunities they don’t have which others have, or living situations others have and they don’t, etc. As long as property taxes are the primary source of funding for schools, or medical care based the ability to pay for  insurance, just how are people born into a ghetto supposed to get good schools or good health care, and so on? How many people in this country are willing to spend the same kind of tax money on every child in the country to give them a good education?  

Be this all as it may, why is it that these tensions between ethnic groups are suddenly coming to a boil?  When people in general are doing well and life gets better with time, then people, in general, are amendable to better relations with diverse ethnic groups. But for decades now, more and more people find their lives getting slowly worse, not better with time. Still, all this “in general” stuff doesn’t give much clarity to the situation. There are many factors which contribute to this sudden anger of so many against various minorities and of course minority anger against majorities. In this new and first time historical age, where humans have now overpopulated the planet, it is natural for groups to start turning on each other as everyone competes for limited natural resources. The United States is less affected right now than many other parts of the world, only because we got a later start. But we have chosen governmental priorities the last 60 years which have put the welfare of our own population in a precarious position. First is the Eisenhower prediction that the industrial/military complex would become the major portion of our spending budget. Like many ‘empires’ before us, we have built a global ‘empire’ too expensive to maintain and one which is now causing us to be in perpetual warfare in multiple places around the world. We are the only country with military bases all over the world, and all these military engagements have placed our citizens as the primary target of terrorists across the globe. We are no longer the beacon of hope for the poor, the less fortunate, the oppressed, etc. but the target of their anger. Secondly, when any country finds themselves in an economic situation in which 43% of adults do not make enough money to qualify to pay federal tax, this is a genuine tax collection problem. To fully acerbate this problem 2-5% of our population own 90% of our wealth. And these 2-5%, with precious few exceptions, absolutely are addicted or compulsive about gaining even more wealth. Enough will never be enough for this segment of our population. And their wealth currently has the power to virtually control all three branches of government. 

At the same time all this is happening, minorities of various ilk, have been gaining rights that they never before had, but others had.  Add to this, with people living longer, we have an older population who like older populations before them, have varying degrees of genuine nostalgia about life when they were younger. It is not just the nostalgia here, but longer longevity makes them a greater burden for a longer period of time on the younger population. Everyone becomes conflicted about just who is going to pay or should pay for the medical and financial care of the elderly. With modern medical advances we can keep people alive and to varying degrees healthy for decades, but at an expense which is astronomical. Politically we are now in a new and strange situation. Most issues which are serious and bearing down on us from all directions are complicated, and beyond the wherewithal of the average citizen to have enough knowledge to vote intelligently. Everyone ends up susceptible to professional brainwashing. It’s an emotional circus. 

If we are white in this country, especially older and white, this complicated mess is a bit overwhelming and frustrating. And things weren’t like this before all these various minorities started to get new rights (to them, others already had them), new opportunities (for some members of the minorities, but rarely for those most in need of new opportunities), more level playing fields (again mostly for some, but not those minority people most in need). It is absolutely true if, for example, that black manager of the store wasn’t the manager, a white person would be able to have that particular job. All this sort of stuff creates real genuine confusion to everyone in our society. Many whites begin to feel “do I count at all anymore?”, many blacks at the bottom of their own economic strata feel “none of all this shit is making my life any better”, and many hispanics feel “they entice me to come over here and do the crappy work no other Americans will do, at a slave wage, and now they want to deport me when this is the only life I have known for years.”  All these things coming down at once generate anger on so many sides, for so many different reasons. All this anger elected Trump. The problem is Trump has never been interested in anyone else’s misfortunes or limitations at all.  His motto has always been “in any interaction between two people always be sure the other person gets the short end of the stick.”  Any group who thinks Trump will make things better for them is really disillusioned. Trump radiates addiction to personal wealth, power, revenge, and intolerance to diversity. He simply makes it okay for everyone to lash out emotionally, and blame others for any personal predicament.  Affirmative action of past years meant well, but any affirmative action works only if the targeted group is all citizens who grow up in urban, suburban, or rural poverty. With few exceptions the blacks who benefitted from affirmative action were the middle class blacks who didn’t need any special help. For them it just meant they could attend Harvard instead of the University of Toledo, or get promoted ahead of whites. 

But there is a genuine oddity here.  There are far more people today who appreciate diversity and intermix with all sorts of different ethnicities, religious beliefs, gender differences, varied sexual orientations, and so on—especially younger people. When I wander home from a play late in the evening  toward a EL train in a vibrant city entertainment street there are so many groups of really mixed young people all having a genuine good time together—every color, every shape, the ugly and the good looking, the dumb (we’re all dumb) and the dumber and I think how nice if everyone could feel like these people feel about each other. Maybe when we see these groups we should capture enough such groups and put them in Congress, draw a name from a hat and make one of them president, pick one of each of differing ilk, and put them in the Supreme Court. Then we would have a government in which the leaders were all of good will toward all of our citizens. It certainly would beat what we have now. 

Here’s another interesting phenomenon: in the midst of all this antagonism between ethnic groups, the number of interracial marriages has grown at an exponential rate. Of course that becomes an irritant to many in and of itself. My guess is that some people, trying hard to get along with someone of a different race, find the efforts of both leads to a genuine attraction that would never have occurred were they dating someone of the same race. Sometimes I guess, for some, for reasons unknown, diversity is an attraction. Even people who express the generalized feeling that white people are now being discriminated against, often have exceptions in their personal life and have close ties with someone of a different race. Nevertheless these exceptions are felt to be just that, exceptions.

All the complexities that apply to this question of white majority anger, or minority anger, have not been covered in this musing. This is an emotional situation, not a purely rational one, and we all are left with emotional feelings. It is like when the doctor says, “stop worrying about this”, how do we stop worrying? We could say to ourselves, “stop feeling this way about other ethnic minorities”, but too often, feelings are feelings, and depending how strong they are, those feelings will remain. How many parents have been angered when an off spring falls in love with someone of different race or religious or cultural bent.  While there really are no facts to throw around, we may try our best, and in the end we accept or we lose a good relationship to an offspring when such a coupling leads to marriage. 

Even the dumbest amongst us understands it would be better “if we could just get along”, but even the smartest amongst us hardly have the insight to create such a social state. It does seem that the laws which govern the evolutionary process, depending on diversity and all the commotion that comes with diversity, are needed for evolutionary process. It is what it is I guess. 

Given all these important issues which are coming down the pike at us from various directions—we, like it or not, are now in the political age of feelings. Feelings are rampant, and even labeled alternate facts. Progress is good, but has led us to a tangled web of babbled feelings and what this portends for the future is anyone’s guess. I think Sheebiejiebee my cat knows, but she keeps it to herself.   

The Importance of Confederate Statues

The Importance of Statues

Suddenly people  are talking about how important statues are to our history and culture. So we might wonder, how important are statues to our history and culture?  There are ways to measure this. For example we could randomly ask people on the street. Like “What are your favorite statues?”  Maybe quite a few people might name the Lincoln Statue at the Lincoln Memorial. Others might name the Statue of Liberty, but just don’t ask who that is a statue of. Some might say George Washington and you could then ask “Which statue of him?”  Expect a puzzled stare. There is, I think some building in Washington that has pictures or statutes or both of every President. We could go there and then ask someone looking at a statue of, let’s say Benjamin Harrison, “having seen this statue what part of American History or culture do you understand better and in what way?” We could do all this but do we really want to spend the day annoying others? We know the answers.

Another approach would be to ask Scholars of American History where they learned their knowledge. I suppose they will mention all the college courses they took, or maybe their many hours spent in various historical museums, or maybe the many books they have read or the many articles on the internet. That seems to make a lot of sense, and I would be surprised if they said, “Well I learned most of it from looking at statues in parks.”

When I hear some fired up southerner emotionally explaining how these statues represent our history and culture I always want the reporter to ask when is the last time they have been to a history museum, or how many courses they have ever taken in American History or culture, or what was the last book they read on American History or Culture, or what were the best articles on the internet they read about American History or Culture.?  Don’t be surprised if the answer is: “What are you, some sort of smart-ass?”  Then you might ask “Don’t you think the battle over slavery is over and done with?”  They will respond, “Who’s talking about slavery? I don’t got no prejudice against anyone, I get along with blacks on the job just fine.” And maybe they do. “Well, if you are not using this statue to celebrate slavery what are you celebrating?”  “I am celebrating independence, the south was fighting to be free from the oppression of the north”. “Okay, aside from the loss of freedom to own slaves, what other freedom did the south lose?” Once again, now is likely the time we then get punched in the nose. But the person could answer that “Slavery was just the beginning of our loss. Then the coons got the right to vote, next thing we knew they could be in the same school as our kids, sit anywhere’s on a bus, eat at a lunch counter, use the same bathrooms. For Christ’s sake, it never ends, today even gay people have the right to marry. What kind of country have we become?  What is anyone giving me? Don’t I matter anymore?” It won’t do much good to point out that no one has taken any rights away from him, just given others the same rights he has always had. Human nature is consistent. “If it weren’t for this or that group I would have a better job, make more money, have a higher standard of living, and have more job opportunities. See that nigger over there, the manager of that store—were it not for people like that I could be the manager. But no, they got to prove something or whatever and he gets to be manager. Nobody cares about me.”  This person is not totally wrong. 

In a planet now suffering human overpopulation, tolerance for human diversity is going to plummet. We have more and more people seeking a bigger piece of a pie that is not growing in size. There are not enough natural resources available today for all people to live the kind of lifestyle myself and others live. 

The Statue of Liberty came to represent the American message of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free”.  Most of our forefathers came here to escape a bad situation elsewhere. But times have changed with human overpopulation. There are currently 75 million homeless refugees living in varied refugee camps across the globe and the numbers are growing at an exponential rate as overpopulation turmoil grows in more and more nations. Nobody wants these refugees. Of course not. If we took them in our population would grow from 320 million to 395 million people. That would be a 23% increase in our population and it would be populations who don’t speak English, mostly have no occupational skills, no money to buy a home, or rent one, or money to go to college, etc. We need another statue, one that projects an image of “Enough is enough”. What is the world to do with these 75 million people?  In 5 years it may be 600 million people. Twice the number of our own citizens. Very few people are willing to face the human overpopulation problem. Hell, a good number of people can’t even accept climate change as a future problem. 

In the broadest possible sense, too many people—in our own country and around the world—are discontented with their lives, just frustrated with their situation in life—and while the cause of individual anger differs widely—we can see the expressed results of this anger in various expressions. We have angry voters—and thence Trump—we have the emotional pain from life situations and heroin addiction, we have terrorism, we have Black Lives Matter, we have this sudden attention to statues, we have increasingly unsafe streets, we have rising tensions between the have’s and the have not, anger at immigrants, anger at minorities, religious anger at shrinking membership, and like it or not, beneath any outward civility toward each other is a simmering cauldron of anger beneath the surface seeking some way to express itself. Not good.

The reality is that statues don’t really mean that much to us. They are there mostly for decorative purposes. Perhaps we might be better to listen to someone like Robert E. Lee. When his fellow southerners began to raise money for his statues, he pleaded with them to cease. He told them, “The war is over. We lost. It is time to heal and unify the country.”  I am not aware that historians, north or south, have any disrespect for Lee. He was a product of the south at the time. Lincoln himself said the north had no monopoly on moral principles, that had he been raised in the deep south maybe he would view slavery different. What hasn’t changed over time is the inherent nature of human ethics “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” This Golden Rule is universally seen as a basic moral principle. Lincoln, as he so often did, condensed the whole conclusion of the Civil War with these words: “With Malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us starve on to finish the work we are in: to bond up the nation’s wounds; to care for him sho shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” That is how Lincoln ended the war, not much different as on the same note Lee did. 

Lincoln never changed. It is well to remember exactly how he viewed the war when it started: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Common sense and the Golden Rule should be used to end this statute issue. If I were to own a team and decide, for whatever innocent enough reason to nickname the team ‘Red Skins” and bunch of American Indians came and said they felt insulted by this, I would simply pick a different name, not insist I mean no harm and therefore their feelings don’t matter. Many of these statutes are standing in what are now black neighborhoods. From what both sides say when interviewed it really is about race, not history or culture. What is equally clear is that indeed slavery and the Civil War is part of our history and past culture. History and culture of the past are learned in courses, from books, from movies, from the internet, and from Museums. That is where these statues should be. Then they become more meaningful to the person in the museum trying to learn about past history and culture. It seems the people of the North and the South should heed the advice of their leaders at the time of the Civil War. Lincoln was the hero of the North and Lee was the biggest hero of the South. Both said we need move on. 

Finally, it need be remembered that whether Lincoln had engineered the end of slavery in this country or not, someone else would have done it later down the road. The U.S. was one of the last countries to do away with slavery so even now our country cannot brag about being in the forefront to end slavery. It took a war in which more Americans were killed than in all subsequent wars for us to end slavery. Will we ever let it go? Today, it is not slavery which is the biggest challenge, but how can responsible reproduction be mandated on a global basis. We, nor anyone else, has effectively addressed this problem nor is their any indication any nation anywhere has gotten a handle on this. If we think the Civil War was human catastrophe in terms of deaths, if Mother Nature is left to solve this overpopulation problem, the death rate is going to be a doozy.