Mid-week Grumbling

No, I didn’t watch the so-called debates. Those things make me nervous. I sort of place them in the same category as watching an automobile race. The main objective of the crowd is to hope that someone in the group destroys herself or himself. Petty, inconsequential things rule. One word. One poorly shaven or perspiring face. One second of consideration of a trick question similar to, “Do you still beat your wife?” or “Do you think that, as human being placed on Earth in horrible, debased, cruel, and vicious circumstances, and fleeing to a safe haven to save your family from a lingering and tortuous death … you should receive comfort and basic health care from the richest country on the planet, while thoughtful, reasonable people contemplate your fate?”

Oh, that wasn’t the way the question was asked, now was it? What if the question ended with, “If you think the Galilean would have you say 'yes,' raise your hand?”

It seems we have conditioned too many Americans to say, “No, my Jesus would tell them to go back to where they came from.” They don't follow "the pale Galilean," but the orange evangelist and his crew of merry-makers.

That’s why I don’t watch the debates. I do try, though, to watch what’s happening to us, and it ain’t a pretty sight these days.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 33 (Cont._2)

Urban planning requires a lot of public hearings. Some are useful, some not. Some are entertaining, some not. Most are interesting. I attended a few during the summer of 1972 while I waited for my wedding day. I remember one in particular in my home town.

The way public hearings were conducted in those days was pretty standard, in most cases. Once the major decisions had been made, the city invited the public in to make comments or ask questions. After enduring what often turned into an ordeal, the city went ahead and carried out its original proposal. Planners would change the approach as years went by, but this was years ago, remember. One might say that we were, back then, approaching the twilight years of the good-old-boy days.

I don’t really remember what the public hearing in question involved exactly. I remember that it had to do with housing, and the room was full. I also remember that major actors in town favored a positive outcome. I remember that some people in the room didn’t.

The first speaker was a young architect whose firm was designing the project. I felt a little sorry for him since nothing in his experience or training had prepared him to deal with hostile audiences. They generally train architects to assume that they know best and to behave accordingly. There were emerging factions in the 1970s that didn’t buy into that. They called them “neo-hippies” and worse things. A group of them were in attendance that night, to the discomfiture of the architect.

They pulled his chain from every direction imaginable. They made him mad when they questioned his judgment. They made him defensive when they suggested revisions. They even made him go red-faced and almost cry when they questioned his motives. Flustered, he introduced the developers. They would know how to handle a crowd of people.

Speaking of the crowd, it wasn’t uniformly hostile. The proponents of the project had assembled a goodly throng of adherents: real estate folks, tradesmen, bankers, wholesalers and others who stood to profit from the project. All in all, it proved a rollicking good time. I felt that way since I had no vested interest. I simply drove down and attended to further my education.

It finally came to the point where a young activist was questioning the primary developer of the project about its possible impact on an adjacent low-income neighborhood. She wore a long, flowing gown-dress, sandals, love-beads, and a flower in her hair. She looked as if she belonged more in Candlestick Park than Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Her questioning concerned the lack of open space in the project and whether the housing couldn’t be built “up more than out.”

The developer answered her in the tone of a parent explaining to a four-year-old why the sun doesn’t shine when it rains. The design followed the demands of maximum economic efficiency. The design would provide maximum housing for minimum expenditures. Any other design wouldn’t be profitably feasible. Were there any more questions?

The woman said something then that produced a wave of laughter from the proponents of the project, as well as from the planning commissioners.

She said, “I don’t happen to believe that one should profit from providing a basic human need.”

The developer chuckled at her in response. The Chairman called the public hearing at an end and a vote hurriedly followed. As the men stood congratulating themselves, the activists marched defiantly from the room. The whole thing made me think.

Her comment sure sounded ludicrous at the time. With each passing year, it sounds less so.

Morning Thoughts: January 17, 2018

One of the things that cause me despair these days has to do with my college education. I decided at first to study architecture. The only problem there was it took talent, and I had none. I ended up in urban planning, a more fitting, and surprisingly well-paid career. I flourished, but never regretted my efforts in architecture. They proved most fruitful in both my professional and public lives.

See, they taught me that problems exist to be solved, and that solving them is one of life’s noble callings. Further, it taught that difficult problems can be addressed with a combination of facts, analysis, education, study, application, and cooperation.

Does it always work? No. Is there a better way of solving problems? Not that I know of. Then what is causing me despair?

Simply this: at our higher levels of government, I see no effort to solve some of the most serious, dangerous, and emotionally-charged problems that our country faces. This unwillingness to collaborate on addressing problems appears is chipping away at the fundamental tenants of a democracy that once was a shining light for the world. That democracy is now becoming a world-wide laughing stock.

When solutions are proposed in Washington, or many state capitols, they are the most potentially disruptive, cruelest, polarizing and mean-spirited ones that can be devised. Is there an alternative? Maybe.

Some years ago, the federal legislature passed, and the president signed into law a bill very favorable to religious and other institutions but not so for public bodies, including cities. One of the provisions of the act stated that solutions proposed by those public entities had to be the “least restrictive possible.” That’s not a bad stricture for many issues—perhaps not for pandemics, but for most things. Current proposals by the federal government, however, tend to verge on the most restrictive and, as I say, disruptive solutions possible. One feels obligated to say, “physician, heal thyself.”

As for the poor, the disadvantaged, the forgotten, strangers from another land, or those whom nature didn’t produce as a Caucasian heterosexual, the attacks are particularly heinous and the neglect most heartbreaking. The most terrifying and confusing aspect of all this is that the very worst of the persecutors are the ones who most loudly claim direct guidance from The Galilean.

Is either political party blameless? No. But as the actual or cultural descendants of those who froze in the Ardennes, suffered for a woman’s right to vote, ended slavery, or hung from trees as “Strange Fruit” in our American South, we have the right to an elected president who seeks to unite, not divide us. If that individual refuses to do so, we have the right to demand that the political party represented take action for Americans and not for party.

It’s too important that it doesn’t. How can America be great when some of her children died of hunger last night? When war profiteers are using their power to convince us to invade again. When those who have everything demand more? When there are sick and dying in America, lying alone in forlorn places with no medical care. When there are those who love America, and would become a part of her heritage if only their plight could be viewed with human compassion instead of retribution. When there are those who are not allowed to live in peace as nature made them. When young boys are imprisoned in a ghetto hovel awaiting the day they are given their first gun and sent forth as a drug runner.

The list goes on, and we tweet our thoughts instead of proposing actions. As for me, I think I’ll go look in the mirror at the face of one of the guilty.

Reconciliation: 14

Don’t know about you, but I rejoice to know we still live in a nation governed by laws. The country had, it seemed to me, been drifting too much along the lines of the Weimar Republic to permit a comfortable night’s sleep.

Politics is a messy business that many people don’t understand. In my household, decisions involve only two people. Even then, they may involve hours of analysis, scenario-imagining, alternative analysis, and fiscal computations before she decides what we will do and I begin figuring out how to do it.

Imagine, on the other hand, if you had to convince a majority of 99 other people to follow your thinking on the resolution of a single issue. Imagine further that a majority of that majority will not form a decision based on your logic, or any logic at all. Factors as disparate as ideology, party loyalty, donor demands, and personal prejudices will control any number of votes.

The truth is, it is a miracle that laws ever get passed at all. The rare individual who is good at getting them passed at all may be a creature more ruthless than redemptive. But, consider Lyndon Baines Johnson. Hardly admirable in his personal habits, and unable to evade the tragedy of Vietnam, millions now have health care and millions more are free to exercise a right to vote because of this man who wouldn’t shrink from the most deplorable methods to pass a law.

Perhaps that is why we often hear the quote, “One should never watch sausages or laws being made.” It is ofttimes attributed to Bismarck. Don’t know if he actually said it, but it’s popular from time to time to attribute quotes to him, so what the heck?

That having been said, there should be boundaries that we don’t cross, and it seems we have crossed a few lately. When such a danger looms, it is the rule of law, not prayer, that saves us as a country, one more reason for the First Amendment separation of church and state. Is this to say personal spirituality doesn’t matter in our voting patterns? Of course not. I even place my voting habits on a segment of Christian literature. Yes, I do. I always try to offer my vote to the candidate who best fits my favorite scripture in theology, to wit:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn: for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Does anyone ever make all eight points? Of course not. The real terror is that we elect so many that fail to score even one point, while trying to force their own brand of religion upon us.

Just thinking.

Compassion

Early morning thoughts with my new good friend A. Vivaldi:

You know, when the United States Supreme Court eviscerates the Affordable Health Care Act, it won’t affect me or my family. I say “when,” not “if” for they would seem to have the votes. Four justices hate President of the United States Barack Obama so viciously that they would vote to depose him and replace him with Charles Manson if they had the chance. A fifth hates government itself badly enough to join in the disgrace.

No, it won’t affect me our mine.

It will affect the person I know who is alive today because the AHCA allowed a life-saving medical treatment that had previously been denied for lack of money, that person who forwarded a shameful cartoon not long ago comparing President of the United States Barack Obama to a gorilla.

It will affect the person I know who is healthy enough to work but instead exists totally on disability payments and medical care provided by us, the taxpayers, and who rarely completes a sentence without including a reference to “that n****r president.”

It will affect those who, physicians report, are receiving health care in record numbers for the first time in decades because of the AHCA, but who recently traded six years of shame for six seconds, at the voting booth, of revenge against the country for electing a person of color as President of the United States.

 

So all we can do is wait and hope for a "Beckett Moment" when justices may, in a flash, realize there is a higher mandate than a political directive. If it doesn't happen, we'll just watch the poor die and remember, like "Camelot," that there was once this brief shining moment in America.

Oh, and it won’t affect the health care of the Supreme Court justices or the members of congress who are egging them on. They have, and will continue to have, excellent care provided by us, the taxpayers.

So why, the followers of Ayn Rand would say, should they care since it won’t affect them and why should you since it won’t affect you?

I guess it is because I have a heart and because I agree with St. Luke.

St. Luke - I think he quoted a man
who said something about the
poor being blessed. Oh well, it's
an outdated concept.

See also www.wattensaw.presss.com