Seems Like Only Yesterday...

(from Fuel For Thought, 2004)

Moral Values and Cancer           (November 3, 2004)                                                    

At 3:30 a.m. today I tuned to CNN and listened to Bill Schneider reporting on exit polls, his effort to explain how the exit polls could have got it so wrong about Kerry’s presumed success earlier on Tuesday.  He said people kept talking about “moral values, moral values, moral values” one after the other.  And in today’s NY Times, Nicholas Kristof reminds me that one third of Americans are evangelical Christians (98 million white-robed souls), and that they feel “Democrats are contemptuous of their faith”.

I became so frustrated I googled “moral values” to see if I could find some way to understand why I could be feeling so alienated.  As I scrolled down, I spotted a reference to Tennessee Williams.  I’ve always felt that Southern writers/artists have had a good fix on the hypocrisy in our culture (Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor also pop up, especially O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People”—check them out to experience the blindness of those who will not see.).  Williams’ genius, of course, has been shunned by our homophobic culture, so his cultural observations have lacked serious considerations, because the red states (see last paragraph) regard him, I suppose, as an elitist.

Anyway, in his study of Williams, “’Certain Moral Values’: A Rhetoric of Outcasts in the Plays of Tennessee Williams” Darryl Erwin Haley states, “The outcast characters in Tennessee Williams's major plays do not suffer because of the actions or circumstances that make them outcast but because of the destructive impact of conventional morality upon them… religious outcasts, who are vehicles for the playwright's commentary on contemporary Christianity.” And Williams, like Faulkner and O’Connor, fuses this naïve, evangelical Christianity with the naïve vision of America as a culture of well-wishers and engaged citizenry.  They demonstrate what we have been experiencing recently—the zealous frenzy of the 98 million evangelical Christians thumping the message of God being at the core of the land of the free and home of the brave is really a front for the land of the spree and the home of the knave.  They are blind to the ground level, real time issues, because they are assured of The Rapture.  These are the people O’Connor includes in the character of the grandmother whom The Misfit (serial killer) refers to when he says, "She would of [sic] been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

The NY Times editorial writer says no matter who wins the election (as of this writing, Kerry has not conceded) the country must pull together.  Is this possible?  My ancestry in this country goes back to the early 1700s, but I don’t feel that I belong here.  I have never felt this alienated.  My moral values have to do with civility and the general welfare.  I don’t see those values being exercised by the majority of the people in my community nor in the way this nation squanders its wealth on consumption.  Everything I see is smiley faces, yellow ribbons and get-the-hell-outta-my-way-and-the-devil-take-the-hindmost.

As I looked at the red and blue map of the voting results, the map seemed to be bleeding internally.  As the youth vote that decided not to show up will discover as it ages, the thing about internal bleeding is that when you find the blood in your stool, it’s already too late.  That’s the insidious nature of colon cancer.  The symbolism here resonates for me.  Beneath America’s show of might and right, of preciousness and righteousness, we are not mindful of our deteriorating cultural health.

Let's Have An Actual Second Amendment

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of The United States of America:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Strict constructionists and their Second Amendment advocates contend that subsequent generations must not tamper with the text or (in their minds) the intent of this (in their minds and hearts) sacred text.  So be it.

If we assert strict adherence to this text, then we must embrace the whole of the statement. Thus, to earn the right to keep and bear arms the citizens must participate in the formation and execution of well regulated militias to defend communities and municipalities. For citizens to earn this right, in a strict adherence to the Amendment’s text, they must voluntarily be members of and participate in militia readiness.

This requires that if you own a firearm, you own membership in and regularly scheduled mustering of a well regulated state militia.  “Well regulated” assumes state proprietorship and financial support of the militia, including especially the proportioning and distribution of the relevant ammunition.  That is, if you want to own any kind of firearm in your state you must participate in that state’s militia and can avail yourself of ammunition for said firearm(s) only under the militia’s auspices.

In addition, firearms manufacturers and distributors must be licensed by each state to provide their products to citizens of that state.  The records of such sales will be stored in state databases and can be accessed only through state judicially executed warrants. 

Such strict and logical adherence to the full text of the Second Amendment would ensure multiple benefits.  It would free firearm owners from the fear that they alone could never have sufficient firearms to defend against the encroachment by the federal government on their rights and property as well as against foreign invaders—they would have their state brothers- and sisters-in-arms as support.  In addition, this strict adherence would comport with the wishes of the states rights faction among the citizenry, ensuring them that each state would control the application of the Second Amendment.  And finally, hopefully, our nation would gradually see a decline in the helter-skelter proliferation of firearms and their consequent use in the slaughtering of our fellow citizens.

Isn’t this what the original constructionists sought—a more assured and cohesive citizenry for our exceptional experiment?  Right?  A more perfect Union?  Yeah, right.

Believing or Thinking

(Another one from the Fuel For Thought files...and very much germane)

Do You Believe, or Do You Think?                                                   (June 15, 20004)

It’s time to listen to our American language.  We can’t really call it English any more.  We can’t even use George Bernard Shaw’s “separated by common language” phrase any more.  Our usage uniquely defines us as American speakers/writers.  Let’s call it Americanese.  I’m mostly interested in the embedded subtleties of our language that define us as a culture.  For example, we say, “Watch what you’re doing.” but the Brits say, “Mind what you’re doing.”  We say, "Watch the gap," they say, "Mind the gap."  American usage is language driven by perception; British usage is language driven by conception, one external, and the other internal.  Our perception is our "reality."

We have other cultural markers.  How about “move on”?  This expresses a categorically American attitude regarding the primary value of the future as opposed to the present or the past (Americans devalue the past, but we’ll save that for later).  Notice the value structure in the following:  “Can’t we just settle this and move on?”  And no one raises the obvious question: Move on to what?  Or should we just settle it because we want to move on?  Is what we settle less important than moving on?  The reason we value the future so highly is that we place a premium on progress; for us, progress (anything that is more and therefore better in the future than it was in the past) is inherently good.  Also, the belief that perfection is perfectible is embedded, even constitutionalized in America.  Sound silly?  How about:  “We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union…”?  Americans disparage absolute superlatives.

We also have silly usages.  My favorite one in the last 10 or 20 years is the adjectival usage of “fun”.  Such contortions as “It was so fun.” and  “It was real fun.” (to be distinguished from unreal fun?).  My favorite construction is the bowdlerization “It was much funner than I thought it would be”.  This phenomenon is not new; language speakers (in all living languages) continually contort and distort language to satisfy the need for brevity and contemporaneity.  Our “none”, for example, used to be “not one”, which is why some of us old timers still insist that proper usage says, “None of them is important”.  We have several examples of these contractions without apostrophes.

Which brings me to why I’m thinking about “believe” or “think”. This political-ese annoys me.  My focus is not on the obvious tricks; rather, this is usage we’re overlooking.  I’ve noticed that politicians rarely say they “think” something; it’s always “I believe…” Now if you commit verbally to “thinking” something, you imply that whatever it is will follow a thought process, like logic or common sense.  But if you commit verbally to “believing” something, you imply that whatever you say is based in your faith; you cannot be proven wrong or right, and you are not obliged to produce evidence.  Our faith-based political culture utters almost nothing that doesn’t begin with “I believe.”  Or as his spokesperson at the State Department, Adam Ereli, said in a press conference (6.3.04), “Let’s be clear, it is our belief…”  Belief here is being used to suggest clarity.  Am I the only one who sees the flimflam and absurdity in this?

Media studies specialists analyze this sort of thing all the time.  Have you ever noticed how on camera reporters speak in gerund fragments; e.g., “The White house was busy today.  The President speaking with his cabinet and other administration personnel.  Condoleeza Rice trying to put a good face on the recent turmoil in Iraq.  Mrs. Bush smiling a lot.”  Does media-ese need to be a dumbing down of language?  Do our mediated lives immure us from meaning, simultaneously walling us in and walling us out from understandable communication?  Are Americans less involved with information because we don’t trust the language that delivers the information?  Do we wonder what to think when someone utters, “The fact of the matter is…” then proceeds to voice an opinion?  These common occurrences must be having an effect, and I suspect the effect compels us to stop listening.

Our Ideas?

(Another item from the Fuel For Thought files)

Our Ideas                                                                                           (May 13, 2004)

“We must maintain the credibility of our ideas”. – Thomas Friedman, NY Times, 5.6.04

What are “our ideas”?  I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing the answer to that.  I wonder about some of our shibboleths: like ‘success’ and ‘opportunity’.  We wink at ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ these days; we use them to leverage desperate people.  How do we demonstrate our attitude regarding the significance of human life?  What do we mean by ‘the value’ of human life?  I’ve been wondering about that, too.  Is there a difference between the significance of human life and the ‘value’ of a human life?  Is a human life relevant to the bottom line?

People always speak about their ‘hard earned money’.  Is all money ‘hard earned’?  Is a stock sale or dividend as ‘hard earned’ as a day’s pay for a stonemason?  Do we work to live or do we live to work?  How important is stuff and glitter, the bling-bling that weighs us down, compared to, oh say, our relationships with our children?  Is winning having the most toys when you die, or is it having people who love you beside you when you die?  Late one sultry evening back in 1969, I was asked by my Soviet interpreter, “Why would you want to buy something you didn’t have the money for?”  We were drinking very sweet local ‘champagne’ after a day of vodka toasts.  I had been trying to explain buying on credit, the lifeblood of the U.S. economy.  I tried but couldn’t answer her question, and it haunts me to this day.  And why would you spend your life running like you are a hamster in a cage so you can buy what you don’t have the money for?

We don’t have ideas so much as we have plans…we are always planning to do things and then doing things, but we almost never think about things.  Not in our common lives. 

What do the American people care about?  What do we spend time paying attention to?  Golf scores?  Waiting in line?  Our next cars?  Botox treatments?  Makeovers?  The differences between Cialis, Viagra or Levitra?  Who will be the next paragon of Survivor?  The winner of Nascar?  The American Idol?  Will the friends on “Friends” still be friends after the final episode of “Friends”?  And why do we ‘pay’ attention to something instead of being mindful of it?  Are we in debt to our attention?  Yes, most likely.

So language reveals a lot about us.  I don’t think any of my lists include what Mr. Friedman had on his mind.  I’m not sure most of us have ideas.  Most of us believe, but do most of us think?  So I come to that question for all of us:  Do we know what our ideas are and where they came from?  And do we care?  We are so engorged, not only by most of the food we neither need nor care enough to enjoy, but also by our externals: our clothes, our furniture, our homes, our cars…our stuff.  Hummers rapidly became our national icon, while the national flag is fashioned into underwear and bikinis.  ‘Patriotism’ is flags waving from the roofs of cars and yellow ribbons on trees, the more elaborate the better.  So take a poll, Mr. Friedman; your question is simple:  What are our ideas the credibility of which is in danger?  My poll says that most of us are concerned about how much money we can get.