Morning Thoughts: February 24, 2018

Haven’t taught at my second Alma Mater in over a year. A PhD. Teaches the course now. That’s probably a good idea. I miss it though. Being around young minds offers much satisfaction, both from the gaining of wisdom and the delight of torture.

I taught Introduction To Public Administration, and this would be an interesting time to participate. There’s an air of insanity about the topic that has even caught the attention of young folks.

Quite frankly, they showed limited interest in Marbury v. Madison, a case settled 215 years ago today by a Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Marshall, (no relation, as far as we know, to Thurgood). It established judicial review, or the principle that the Judicial Branch decides the constitutionality of a law passed by the Legislative Branch or greatly valued by the Executive Branch. It has saved the country from shame on occasion, (see Brown v. Board of Education). Despite assertions in the past, these days it shows definite signs of constituting a suicide pact. (See Citizens United).

Anyway. I woke up this morning thinking of a great assignment. Background: In a terrifically bizarre mood, even at a particularly bizarre moment in our nation’s history, by perhaps the most bizarre person to ever hold the office of President of the United States of America, our president actually proposed effecting an end to violence in our schools by arming teachers so they could be prepared to shoot terrorists before they could act. Further, we would pay said teachers a bonus for the extra service to the country.

Don’t go to Snopes. He really said that. No, not The Onion either. See the Washington Post. After all, it did save us from Richard Nixon and Tom Hanks played its editor in a recent movie. It deserves our trust for that, if nothing more.

Unsubstantiated at this point are reports that "gun bonuses" will be based on body counts, mirroring our highly successful strategy in Vietnam.  

Anyway, wouldn’t it be a neat assignment to have the kids write papers summarizing the public administration aspects of such a proposal?

One would hope they would cover the need to rewrite thousands of union contracts, probably resulting in extended and heated negotiations with, oh, say 99.67 percent of them. Now that would be fun to watch. If there is anything some unions know about, it’s guns.

One would hope for each paper to discuss budgeting aspects of the deal. Astute students would realize that, not only would the feds not allocate any money, the present administration would likely cut school funding more than it has already proposed, said cuts to be based on the avowed probability of reduced costs of emergency services and law enforcement participation once the teachers assumed responsibility. Teachers probably form the most capable group of individuals in our country. It’s best not to provoke them

Some misguided students might opt for including any costs in the Department of Defense budget. Trouble with that is … well there are many troubles with it, the main being that the DOD doesn’t favor sharing its bounty with anyone, save defense contractors. It doesn’t even include veteran’s care in its budgeting frolics.

I’m sure that even college students would recognize major problems with the Americans With Disabilities Act. There would be legal challenges flying from both directions: “Don’t tell me I must participate,” and “Don’t tell me I can’t participate.”

Oh, what about African-American teachers? Hell, they get shot down by both actual and self-proclaimed protectors of citizens, even when they don’t have guns in their hands. Would there be waivers? That should cause some heavy thinking, for we teach them that the granting of waivers is a slippery path that could lead to, oh, say, unqualified people receiving security clearances.

I’ve taught them that a degree in public administration offers job opportunities in the field of consulting work. Some students from conservative families would, no doubt, mention opportunities in writing performance standards or as serving as product representatives for arms manufacturers. It would stand as a big disappointment when I had to tell them that those jobs were probably filled before the proposal was made public. Blood is thicker than water, they say, as long as it’s not someone else’s blood.

Other than ADA issues, I would caution students to tread lightly on the legal implications. First, they aren’t attorneys. Second, a supreme court with Clarence Thomas et al in the majority cannot be analyzed by any normal academic standards.

It would be fun to think about it some more, if the whole affair wasn’t so cosmically terrifying.

President Trump explains that
not all teachers must be armed.

Morning Thoughts: February 23, 2018

Strange, I just compiled a mental list of people I know whom I would classify as a bit nutty about guns. Only two served in the military, out of a good many.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t include honest and sincere hunters. I didn’t even include people who keep a firearm, or maybe more, in their home for safety. I certainly didn’t include the ones who collect, restore, or view firearms as a hobby. I may not share their interests, but “to each his own,” as the farmer said, patting the head of his favorite sheep.

I only included those whom I consider, and this is just my personal opinion, irrational on the topic. Those who would put semi-automatic military rifles in the hands of the mentally deranged and tell them to walk our streets.

I included those who would have the government arrest anyone who spoke out against the unlimited worship of guns in our society, claiming protection of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

I included those who would force our government to establish a national religion that, among other things, would sanctify that same Second Amendment or deprive those who didn’t agree of the ability to vote.

I included anyone who would strap an assault rifle across his or her back and wander into Walmart.

I included anyone who would refuse even to sit and have a discussion as to how we might establish a more reasonable national attitude about the bearing of personal firearms in such a complicated social environment.

And so it went. Out of the many, came two I can think of that actually served in the military. I can’t understand why there weren’t more. People who worship music join bands. People who claim to love their god join churches. People who worship food join Weightwatchers, People who worship hatred join the KKK.

Why do so few people I know who live and breathe a love of deadly weapons not join the military?

I’m not actually a psychologist, but I dated a woman in college who became one. Maybe the same lack of discipline in their thinking about guns, guns, more guns, bigger guns, faster guns, and more deadly guns also obviates a lack of discipline that makes military service undesirable to them. Based on my experience with it, the military wants women and men capable and willing to engage in violence when necessary, but never for fun, entertainment, or sexual compensation, only as a highly disciplined team action of last resort.

Or maybe it’s because the military giveth, but the military taketh away. They gave me an M-14 rifle and said, “use it to kill if we say so.” Then they took it away. They gave me an M-16 rifle but they took it away. They gave me a 45-calibler semi-automatic pistol, but took it away. They gave me (because I was six-feet tall and looked like I could carry it) an M-60 machine gun, but took it away. They even loaned me an M-79 grenade launcher for a day but took it away after I almost used it on a band of monkeys.

Their reasoning for the shifting attitudes by the military? The weapons were for war and not suitable for carrying around in civilized society. At least that’s the way they saw it, and regulated it. People who come to worship something to absurdity don’t want its use regulated in any manner.

We aren’t going to repeal that Second Amendment to the United States of America. The First and Thirteenth are in great danger and will likely disappear in my lifetime, but not the Second. I think the worship of the Second by some is due to two things. The first is a mutant gene in our DNA that gained efficacy during the days in which we engaged in slavery. The second reason the Second stands is that there has always been a lot of money in it.

Note to Remington: If you can’t survive, financially, in our blood-drenched world, don’t go into the casino business in New Jersey.

So we beat on, Those on each side of the argument becoming more entrenched and intractable each day. Those in the middle are afraid to send their kids to school, go to church, attend a concert, or buy a little pot without fear of having their bullet-riddled bodies, or those of their children, on the six-o’clock news.

We do need to talk, without the NRA, its legislators, those who really would confiscate all firearms, those who want to repeal the Second Amendment, those who view all firearms owners as fiends, gang members, or those with AR-15s strapped on, included in the talks.

Oh, it’s okay if we bring the kids. After all, they seem to be the only ones making sense these days.

 

Will we ever?

Growing Up Southern: February 22, 2018

Once, in a fit of anger, I made an obscene gesture to my sister in public. I had just entered my teens and she was nearly grown, seventeen or so—by Southern standards rapidly reaching “Old Maid” status. In all likelihood, she may have deserved my disrespectful action. She did know how to “pull my chain,” so to speak.

So up went the finger to the delight of my buddies. Not one to suffer affront easily, she reported the incident to our Sainted Mother.

Fearing for my life, I stayed outdoors that evening until darkness and hunger combined in a most insidious way and forced me to answer the call to supper. We ate in dread-fueled silence. Nearing completion of the meal, she asked me to remain after the others left.

She wanted to talk to me.

There it was, either a beating or reform school, or both. Reform school rose in preference as they had a swimming pool, they weren't too choosy about who they let on the football team, and Benny Colclasure was already there. He owed me money. I surmised that would entail some degree of protection against the bigger boys.

There was no protection from the wrath of Sainted Mother. Even my father feared her, in a manner much as I imagined that the Dark One feared the Holy Trinity.

As I mentally computed the most likely sentence for an affront to one’s sister, the others left the table. There was no doubt in my mind that my sister bore a smirk, but I wouldn't look her way. I simply braced for the onslaught.

Instead, Sainted Mother raised an empty hand and stroked her chin. Ah. A short sermon and pack your clothes. Not too bad. I might even make a “B” in math in prison school. There hadn’t been a ciphering whiz sent there from our school since the legendary Willie Lee Bohanon got sent up years before. He was a sergeant on the police force by this time.

“What?” she asked after thinking on the matter at hand for a moment like a lawyer questioning a witness, “would you do if someone called your sister a bad name in front of a bunch of other boys?”

Here’s where my superior intellect came into play. On the one hand, I knew what I would do—laugh my ass off. On the other, I knew the appropriate answer. “I would teach whoever said it some manners,” I said with an air of resolution that both surprised and intrigued me.

“I know you would,” Sainted Mother said, "I know you would, son." That made me feel like a pile of horse manure. My mind swung immediately to a diametrically opposite point of consideration that made me imagine how, Red Ryder-like, I would lay waste not only to the miscreant, but to his buddies as well. A mamma can exert that kind of change of perspective in a Southern boy.

She let it sink in for a moment and then said, “So you think your sister deserves respect?”

By now I did, for sure.

“Other boys should treat her like the lady she is?

Hell yes! I nodded.

“Then how could you expect them to show respect for her if you don’t?”

The feeling I now bore was worse than anything reform school had to offer.

I’ve thought about that lesson quite a bit, lately. I’d like to tell the story to our current politicians. After all, American citizens, even if they might be as opposed to your way of life as my sister was to mine, deserve respect. If we don’t give it, how will we expect other nations to?

Thank goodness for Sainted mothers. Perhaps we could bottle their wisdom and give it to the less fortunate.

Odd thing is ... my sister and I
are best friend now. You just never know.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 21, 2018

Ever have a tough week? I have. When it happens, I go back and watch videos of Kristallnacht, or 9-11, then to St. Jude’s website where I normally make a contribution.

This may be one of those weeks. It’s shaping up to be a dandy, so I may extend my Plädoyer für Stärke (plea for strength for which our Jewish brothers and sisters must have wished) generosity to the Southern Poverty Law Center as well. I might even extend the salve of serenity to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund. Bestowments can sanctify, as I have always found.

Like I say, it’s not looking good, though. This week. I’m in line for an adult dose it seems.

First, our country is still reeling from a national tragedy. Instead of comforting one another, we have divided into camps and the “insults of blame” grow more furious and frivolous with each passing hour. Whereas we once had leaders who offered healing words in times like this, this “new batch of railroad bums” seems to revel in our discord. Few people look to religion for common healing anymore because, it seems to me, that so few people seem to worship grace and love in these bewildering times. I’m sure that both the Galilean and the Apostle would weep to hear Franklin Graham speak for them.

And, our part of the country is facing a deluge that may evoke a minor Katrina or Harvey. The first day of the rain event has already flooded ground that was already soaked and we have four more days to go. The weather, in recent years, has become a monster of extremes and shows no signs whatsoever of forgiving us for our sins against its planet.

On a personal level, our familial responsibilities have entered a new and more despairing phase. The fact that it was inevitable and expected doesn’t lessen the pain.

My body aches of a morning. The spirit of T.S. Eliot just walked by, mocking me with:

“I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

Pardon me. I need to take a break.

Back now. Just walked into the bedroom to get a robe when a rain-darkened sky allowed just enough light to illuminate the face of my dear companion, still sleeping. She must have been dreaming of pleasant times. We have, after all, had our share. She smiled in sleep, and the glow of it slapped me in the face like a blast of warming heat on a frozen field.

Suddenly, I was beautiful again.

Now, where’s my ZZ Top CD and that dad-blasted checkbook?

"Suck it up Jocko.
We'll always have Wattensaw."
That always helps.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 20, 2018

Nothing happens in moderation anymore. Even the slightest holiday evokes orgiastic waves of guilt-inducing commercials. Spend, they command. Spend or you aren’t a good person. Spend on whomever we honor this week. Spend before it’s too late and you’re considered a bad person. That won't make America great again.

Soon, there may be a “Neighbor’s Day,” on which we are urged to buy a Rolex watch for the man whose dog craps in your yard and a string of pearls for his gossipy wife.

Now it’s the weather. Anyone by now who doesn’t believe the weather patterns are changing has been spending too much time on social media, twittering about hell knows what.

As I write this, we await another monsoon season. I thought I had seen the last of those years ago. But noooo. The experts tell us it’s going to rain each day for the foreseeable future and the ground here is still engorged from the last of Mother Nature’s frivolous binges.

Our farm, where we spend a lot of time caring for a loved one, rests on sixty feet or more of pure clay soil. In fact, the owners of bygone days used to have a brickyard here, operated by slaves, of course. Legend has it that the Federals burned said brickyard and took the slaves and other livestock because the owners were suspected of sheltering the infamous Confederate, guerrilla, spy, and cross-dresser,  “Doc” Rayburn.

But I digress, probably from an unconscious urge to get my mind off the coming deluge. The point I had started circling my tattered wagon-train of a mind around concerned the clay soil. Left to its on predilections, clay makes a suitable, if strong-willed surface upon which to drive vehicles. It’s not much for row-crops, a feature that accounts for the past preference for dairy farming in these parts. Clay soil is just clay soil. It harbors no desire for greater grandeur.

Now, however, when such clay soil is subjected to freezing, and, if you remember, we had a “cold-weather monsoon” back in January, its mindset changes and it wills itself into a gelatinous substance of undisguised ill-will. Add a little, or lot in some cases, of rain and it’s like driving on a field of Jell-O.

That’s what we have to look forward to, and why I’m not overflowing with the “milk of human kindness" this morning. In fact, I think I’ll find me a dog (I won’t have far to look) and just kick the hell out of it.

Goodbye, and bite me.

Oh, and have a blessed day.

Yeah. You'll be in my thoughts and prayers all right.

Morning Thoughts: February 18, 2018

President’s Day. Lots of things on which to dwell. I’ve been around since FDR but only aware since Truman. Even as a child, I wondered why some people hated him so.

For example, there was the time our family attended a rodeo in my hometown. Remember those “fill-in” jokes where the clown and the announcer bounce lines back and forth? Try this one:

Mary had a little lamb.

Its face was almost human.

And every time she raised his tail,

She’d look at Harry Truman.

I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I remember that joke. There were others, like the postcard that pictured a man just knocked to the floor by a cowboy, the man saying “I said Truman was raising taxes. I didn’t say Truman was raised in Texas.”

Years later, I learned the source of much, if not most, of the hatred: fair housing and the integration of the military.

I don’t remember much about Eisenhower. He didn’t get to be a good president until sometime in the 1980s.

We viewed John Kennedy as a great president from the day he was elected. His star has dimmed a bit over the years but, hell, he just looked like a president.

It was easy for me to hate Lyndon Johnson. I blamed him for my having been sent to Vietnam. With more reading, (I’ve read all of Caro’s work so far, along with Dalleck, Doris Kearns Goodman, Arkansas’s own Richard Wood, plus others). I probably know more about him that I do any other president. He gets more complicated with each paragraph. He’s what I call an “Ansel Adams” figure. Like Adams’ photographs, Johnson’s image in history goes from pure white to pure black, with all tones in between. The result is a masterpiece of contrasting elements.

Richard Nixon would have been a good man had he not been such a despicable person. He left many legacies for us to untangle. We’ve accepted the bad ones and we are now dismantling the good ones.

Poor Gerald Ford got the “double-whammy” of history. The first was being typecast as dense and clumsy by Saturday Night Live, and the second was for pardoning “Tricky Dick.” I, for one, thought then, and still do, that he did the right thing. We had, as a nation, been through enough.

Jimmy Carter was, without a doubt, among the best human beings we’ve had in the White House. He walked into a partisan ambush, the first of many to come and he was an unlucky president, in my opinion. He didn’t handle it all well, particularly when his upcoming opponent seems to have been working behind the scenes to bring him down. I suspect JC, like U.S. Grant, had a hard time believing in the baseness of some people.

His opponent, Ronald Reagan was … what can you say? He may have been not only what the country wanted, but what it needed at the time. He was the crazy old uncle that tells funny stories at family reunions and then goes behind the barn and teaches the kids bawdy sea songs. Of all the conspiracies this country is supposed to have endured, his administration actually had one, called “Iran-Contra.” It unfolded in short order, and still stains our national conscious. He further proved, to our current dismay, that Americans don’t mind deficits and a huge national debt as long as they get what they want. He left his next-in-line an economy in tatters.

Thus, the Elder George Bush had to raise taxes to clean up the mess. America has never forgiven him.

Then there was Bill Clinton, the man from Arkansas. If he had only “kept it in his pants,” they might be carving his image on Mount Rushmore by now. He had the opposition party warning us of a coming economic catastrophe if the deficit and debt got too low. This I remember: if you couldn’t make money during the Clinton Administration, you’ll never make money. I’m financially comfortable today because of the peace and prosperity of those years.

What next? When the Supreme Court of the United States elects your president, you have to take what you get. I still imagine that a look of complete surprise comes across his face when the Junior George Bush learns that he was President of the United States for eight years. He was the first to establish what I call a “Salvation Date.” That’s when you have had a checkered past, but find the date of your last arrest and claim to have found salvation next day. Then the press can’t ask any questions about your life before that date. Its value in politics is that it allows religious fundamentalists to vote for scoundrels and say their god told them to.

Then America elected a man referred to around here as “our n****r president.” Among other things, he inherited a “credit card” balance that had paid for the cost of two wars off-budget. For eight years, members of his opposition party used political ads showing a photo of their opponent on one side and a photoshopped-darkened photo of Barrack Obama on the other with a few code words translating as “they are coming for your daughters.” His election shook the foundations of our country with such fury that entrapped racial rage spewed to the surface like a volcanic gas, soiling and staining the very heavens. Its noxious fumes are still settling upon us.

Those fumes helped get us where we are today.

Just my take on things. Ignore it if you don’t agree.

From this to "I'm the
Greatest" in one lifetime.
Remarkable.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 18, 2018

Perhaps we ought not to let the murder of 17 young Americans divide us further. We’re divided enough already, don’t you think?

I keep reading where we ought to talk to one another. That sounds like a good idea to me. I’m not quite sure how it would work, though. I’m not sure how to talk to someone who doesn't believe the scientists who say the Earth wasn't created 6,000 years ago. And I’m sure there are those who don’t know how to talk to someone who doesn’t believe scientists when they say that genetically modified foods are safe.

What are we to do? There are those in either direction who would change their beliefs on neither Torquemada’s grandest torture mechanism, nor from the soundest logic of Socrates. How can sincere dialogue take place in the middle of such chaos?

Maybe it could if we lop a couple of standard deviations off each side of the political spectrum and try again. I could start by saying that I know a few of things with which I think my philosophical opposites would agree, or at least agree to discuss without resorting to ad hominem attacks. To wit:

America, with all its warts and blemishes, is still the envy of most other countries. They wouldn’t criticize us so if it weren’t.

It’s not the number of activists who make change happen. It’s the type of activists who can work for change while attracting enough tacit support to allow victory and not pissing off enough people to ensure failure.

Science and technology are both wonderful things, but, as the late Stephen Jay Gould opined, the two of them can outrace, at times, our moral and ethical growth.

When regulators believe that their job is to write regulations instead of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the polis, we become an over-regulated society and many lose faith in government.

Without a system of governmental oversight, our rivers may catch fire, daily life may become a nightmare of anarchy, and dangers that we may not even imagine now may destroy us.

We don’t really want our planet destroyed.

We may not agree with Mattie Ross of the immortal True Grit, that “enough is as good as a feast,” but we should agree that those who have everything should not want to obtain more on the backs of their fellow countrymen. At least I hope we think so.

Few people or groups of people are either perfect or without some redeeming points.

A lack of education does not obviate a lack of goodness.

Education is not evil.

Southerners are not all racists idiots, Easterners are not all hypocritical elites who preach brotherhood from their limousines, Northerners are not all gangsters and union thugs, and Westerners are not all drugstore cowboys or nuts who have all rolled to the edge of the known world.

We’re all in this together.

Feel free to add your own. I'm ready to talk.

Talking is good.